Oh no, not Mahler again!

I can’t quite figure this out. For the past few years I’ve had spontaneous Mahler-itis  in the month of December. I wouldn’t have noticed a pattern if I hadn’t been keeping track of my listening sessions (as I’ve been doing over the past several years). Only a few weeks ago I grabbed my Mahler box and listened to three symphonies in one day – the 5th, 6th and 7th.

 Prior to that I finally got around to listening to my Mahler 9th Symphony disc with Pierre Boulez conducting. That was the last of the big Mahler pieces I needed to hear. It really seemed to me to be a final summation of everything else that came before it. All the thirty-one flavors were available under one roof with the 9th. (Possibly only here will you get a comparison between Mahler and Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream).

I therefore feel it is my duty to point out that if you’re expecting a scholarly dissertation about Gustav Mahler and his celebrated musical output on this blog you’re probably going to be disappointed. No worries, though. If scholarship and analysis is what you crave, there is no shortage of this information elsewhere on the web. Mahler is one of the most widely written about composers of the late Romantic era. Mahler is to the “serious” music world what Bob Dylan is to the rock and roll world. Mahler’s work has been dissected, theorized about, re-imagined, extolled and debated-over ad infinitum. In a previous entry I made the case for the emergence of the long playing 33 1/3 RPM album in the late 1940s and the ascendance of Mahler’s star in the latter half of the 20th Century. That is, in my opinion, one half of the puzzle. The other half of what may possibly explain the fascination with Mahler into our current times, comes from a theory proposed by Leonard Bernstein.

Bernstein made it part of his life’s work to actively crusade for a greater, more sweeping recognition of Mahler’s work beyond the symphony halls of the world. Bernstein believed Mahler’s music was the secret key that would unlock a deeper understanding about modern humanity’s place in the post-World War II era (continuing through today). If I’m reading Bernstein correctly, this understanding would transcend even the limited timeframe of the Cold War (Shostakovich being more suited to musically documenting that era). Leonard Bernstein certainly must have believed in Mahler’s music, maybe even more passionately than his own, since his recordings of the Mahler symphonies are considered among the most definitive by experts. Those experts – the Mahlerites – have been a lucky bunch over the years. Between the proliferation of the music on records and Bernstein’s tireless promotion of it, appreciation of Mahler is arguably at an all time high. The Mahler vibe is alive and well with no signs of diminuendo.

When I started out on my slightly more organized journey into “serious music” one of the first pieces of music I sat down to listen to was Mahler’s “Song of the Earth”. I got a mint stereo copy of this famous box set with Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as part of a freecycle haul years ago. I kept this especially since I remembered reading an article on how The Beatles’ song “Not a Second Time” had a harmonic similarity to the ending of Mahler’s work. Here is that famous article:

http://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/12/27/the-times-what-songs-the-beatles-sang-by-william-mann/

Not that The Beatles had any conscious idea of what they were doing (most likely)! True or not, this association stuck in my mind years later so when I came across this 2 LP set in the pile I knew enough not to discard it. I’m not sure what the heavy Mahlerites think of the Fritz Reiner / Chicago Symphony / RCA “Living Stereo” version of Das Lied. I do know what I thought of it on first listen……confused as hell! Of course, it isn’t always advisable to read the last chapter in a book to get a sense of what the story is about. What I did manage to learn about this piece is that it was inspired by some ancient Chinese poetry which may or may not have been translated into Mahler’s German very well. So, I figured if Mahler was stuck with an inaccurate text to work with, how critical can anybody be when it comes to this kind of music?

As it happens, my listening to “Das Lied” coincided with the passing of a friend of mine, who happened to have excellent taste in music. Although we were not close friends per se, our conversations were always animated by a mutual love of great music. I had gone to visit him in the hospital when he took ill which ended up being the last time I saw him. I think he knew “this might be it” and as I was shaking his hand he held onto mine for a slightly longer period of time than what would be considered normal. It was a final goodbye.

    Returning home from my friend’s wake later in the month, I immediately felt it was the right time to hear “Das Lied”. True to my own processing pattern, I felt more moved by the overall sound of the music than of the significance of the texts. What can I tell you – I’m just not a lyric guy! When I started hearing other Mahler works I eventually realized that “Das Lied” stands a bit apart from his other works since it has a generally even-keeled sensibility to it – stately and somewhat morose, yet dignified. However, the music is not sentimental Romantic mush. The music borders on the “modern”, in fact. Which is precisely where Mahler belongs – feet in the Romantic era, head in the modern.

“Das Lied” was apparently sketched out initially as an almost-9th symphony. Some Mahler experts see it this way, while others will point out he did finish a proper 9th and started a proper 10th. I think Mahler was fairly obsessed with the symphony as the ultimate framework of expression for a composer’s true inner self. Which is fascinating when one considers he spent most of his working life conducting opera. What’s even more amazing is that he managed to compose as much as he did with such a busy conducting schedule. Still, the modern technology we have now affords us listeners with the opportunity to own a single box set with quality performances of every stitch of music he feverishly scribbled onto staff paper (like the one pictured above).

    I didn’t just jump from “Das Lied” to the box set, however. Like I said, “Das Lied” hit me on an emotional level, but otherwise I was pretty baffled. I figured maybe this Mahler guy was ultimately too doom-n-gloom for me in general. It took going back to the beginning to gain entrance to the Mahler inner sanctum. My guide would be Bruno Walter – early champion and friend to the composer for many years. The piece would be Symphony #1.

Ironically, the third movement of this piece had something in common with a Beatles song. In 1966, the Beatles released a hard-driving single with a great vocal by Paul McCartney called “Paperback Writer”. As part of the backing vocal part to that song, the French children’s folksong “Frère Jacques” provided the main inspiration. Once its pointed out it becomes very obvious, if it isn’t noticed anyway. In Mahler’s 1st, “Frère Jacques” also forms the main backing motif for a “funeral dirge” movement. Just as the Beatles would do many years later, Mahler uses this common folksong to his advantage – the melody moves the piece along, yet it serves to provide just the perfect touchstone melody to hook the listener in with a familiar tune. At least, that’s what it did for me.

    Mahler’s first can fit on one LP and, although it didn’t wow the concert-going crowd at the time of its premier, it is one of the most commonly found pieces of his on record. I’ve seen mad, crazy copies of Mahler’s 1st  - I have lots on LP and there’s plenty I’ve left in the bins for others to plunder over the years. As it happens, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas dedicated a nice episode of his “Keeping Score” series to Mahler’s 1st which blew my mind even further! There’s all kinds of intense stuff built into this symphony – things I never would have known about if it weren’t for this cool series. I was going to post a link here - especially since PBS has kept the video on their site - yet its no longer featured! Let's hope they bring it back since it was really awesome. Well worth seeking out somehow........

From the 1st, I wound up jumping to the 5th. Unfortunately, I bought a Karajan mid-70s recording that baffled me even more than “Das Lied”. It was rough going trying to grapple with that thing! Eventually I grasped onto the last movement which seemed to tie everything else together, but Karajan’s reading is far from my favorite these days. I’d give a nod to Bernstein’s reading from the 1960s on Columbia.

After the shock of the 5th, I was pleasantly surprised by the user-friendliness of the 4th – another short-n-sweet symphony in Mahler’s cannon. I’d initially heard a cheapo version on CD, though now I’d give the nod to Fritz Reiner’s version. I then jumped over to the 8th – The Symphony of a Thousand. I really liked the Solti reading for Decca in the early 70s.  At this point I’d been leapfrogging around the symphonies and felt I needed to take a more chronological approach. I also decided that simply pulling the pieces off the CD box set would be too passive for my listening habits so I set about finding some remaining symphonies on vinyl. I got ahold of a 2nd and 3rd this way – both being double albums! The 2nd was a reissue copy of  Bruno Walter conducting the New York Philharmonic. The 3rd is a Bernstein / New York Philharmonic reading from the early 60s.  Both of these albums helped me to dig in deeper and discover the uniqueness of those two excellent pieces.

At around the same time I found LP copies of Bernstein’s 60s performance of the 5th (better than Karajan’s) and Szell’s reading of the 6th with the Cleveland Philharmonic. All of these pieces are LONG. Mahler loved long symphonic works. Having the music broken up over the course of 4 LP sides provided appropriate breaks for me. Getting familiar with all the different movements of each symphony somehow was easier with the vinyl LP format. It was only after playing the records a bunch of times that I felt ready to move back to the discs in my CD box set.

    The one exception to this approach was my first listen to Mahler’s 7th which involved an open reel tape of Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic I got off ebay cheaply. It turned out to be excellent and I took to it right off the bat. Here are a few other Mahler open reels I have:

Take a look at this wacky thing:

A misguided attempt to make Mahler psychedelic for the hippie crowd? This record has excerpts from various symphonies – presumably the more popular parts. The sleeve notes on the back of the jacket were written by Dave Marsh from Creem Magazine. I don’t doubt his sincerity about appreciating Mahler’s music, but to compare Mahler to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the MC5 is just a bit too much! Decca Records created an imprint for this series of classical samplers called “Orphic Egg”. Take a look at this inane legend on the record jacket:

I think Mahler would have been appalled. This “Orphic Egg” series must have been concocted to compete with the Westminster Gold weirdness……..

    Instead of “Mahler’s Head” I decided to re-listen to “Das Lied” while I was typing this. My ears tend to accept the rougher edges of the tonalities here and overall I am enjoying the music. Yet, I’m feeling conscious of the fact that I am not reading along with the words. Ah, with any luck I’ll live to a ripe old age and have nothing better to do than to revisit ALL of the Mahler symphonies several times over during the course of a prolonged retirement on my way out of the temporal world.

Music can play a big part of that passage through the temporal zone, as it did for Herr Mahler. His symphonies were like planets unto themselves – he designed them as such. Yet, just as time passes – what were burning questions and desires at one point are superceded by other questions and desires. It was Mahler’s job as the composer to document his inner life for all to hear. That his music had a particular resonance long after his death is quite astounding. We don’t tend to think of composers as visionaries and mediums. Yet, it is often the case that those who dare to dream big dreams tend to dream outside the confines of the grey, blah and “meh” existence us mere mortals inhabit from day to day. Our lives become that much richer when we dare to dream along with our sonic spirit-guides.

    Keep those dreams grand and bold in the new year! Thanks again for stopping by to read this stuff. As always – Happy Listening!

Delius & Kate Bush

 Years ago in the mid-80s, before I discovered college radio, I remember hearing  Kate Bush’s  “Running Up That Hill” on the local “rock” station (this was before they gave up playing new music). This song certainly didn’t get a lot of airplay, but my ears always perked up whenever it came on. Eventually the infrequent exposure resulted in my bringing home her “greatest hits” release “The Whole Story” – on vinyl no less.  “The Whole Story” was anything but though – she has managed to keep releasing new music right to the present day. More likely this collection was issued to satisfy her ready-to-expire contract with EMI America (her next new release would appear in 1989 on Columbia). While waiting for something new, I started picking up her earlier records from which the greatest hits disc was culled. I still don’t have all of them (missing Lionheart and that live thing whatever it was). Her first album was quite conventional with experimentation really starting to gear up by the third LP.

    On that third LP, “Never for Ever”, the second track was a curiously titled song called “Delius”. As is typical for me, I never gave much thought to what the song was about, lyrically. The music was so interesting I didn’t worry about the subject matter, except that it struck me as pretty obscure whatever it was. I’d learned not to worry too much about whatever Kate Bush’s lyrics were about since so many of her songs seemed fairly esoteric and well, who cares anyway? I still have that kind of reaction to music in general. Unless they’re memorable, interesting or insightful (or obnoxious) I really don’t pay much attention to words of songs. Or maybe not as much as most folks. As it is, the lyrics themselves have a minimalist aesthetic:

DELIUS:

Delius, he's a moody old man
Delius, song of summer in his hand
Delius, he's a moody old man
Delius, in, in, in his hand
Delius, in his hand

Delius
Ta, ta-ta
Hmm
Ta, ta-ta

Delius
Delius amat
Syphilus, Deus
Genius

Delius, to be sung of a summer
Delius, night on the water
Delius, on the water
Delius

Ta, ta-ta
In B, Fenby

Delius
Delius amat
Syphilus, Deus
Genius

To be sung of a summer
Night on the water
On the water
On the water


Hmm….what the blinking hell is that all about? Well, it certainly makes for more interesting mouth noises than “Sussudio” perhaps, but still. Remember, this was all way before the internet so you’d really have to dig deep to glean any kind of information and even then you’d wonder if the story you heard was accurate. This was still the era of the great rock and roll myth machine. In any case, Kate Bush had other bizarre song lyrics so this was not out of the ordinary. I hadn’t heard “Delius” in a long time until I recently played the whole record again……….in case you’ve never heard this particular track:

It’s funny how our brains react to old stimuli. I’d heard this song many times in my younger days and my brain settled into that same place the last time I listened – which was that sort-of semi-catatonic / confused wonderment, yet happy, state of just general enjoyment. Very nice and thank you………….until I couldn’t get “Delius” out of my head the next day and….oh! Wait a minute! I’ve been listening to “serious” music lately haven’t I? Oh, yeah – there’s a composer named Delius! An ENGLISH composer! Hmmm……now armed with google I went looking. Sure enough! In 1968, film-maker Ken Russell (responsible for, among other things, the much maligned Who film version of “Tommy”) made a black and white BBC Omnibus film about Frederick Delius. The basis of the film was a book written by a man named Eric Fenby who served as an apprentice of sorts to Delius when the master was in his advanced stages of old age and (crippling) syphilus. Whoooah! Surely Kate Bush must have seen this film (and, of course, here it is…..)

And, wonder of wonders, here is a clip from a British tv show where they brought Kate Bush and Fenby together making for esoteric, yet fascinating, cross-cultural / generational connectivity. Woooow!

 None of this would have ever mattered a whit to American audiences who basically still don’t know Kate Bush from Frederick Delius then or now. Kate Bush essentially held to her artistic and moral values by refusing to “sell out” or elevate her image above her music. Delius, for a variety of reasons, never quite managed to fit in with composers of his era – Sibelius, Mahler, Shostakovich, Ravel, Debussy – all of these are well known today. Delius was groundbreaking – one of the first serious composers to integrate the harmonies of African-American blues (field-hollers) and folk forms into his pieces long before Gershwin. This influence in particular comes from time the composer spent in Florida, sort of overseeing a family orange grove plantation (mostly he was preoccupied with music and, well, sowing his oats as it were).

From this formative experience sprung his now famous “Florida Suite”. This piece was decisive since it served as the ice-breaker between young Delius and his mentor Edvard Grieg. The elder Norwegian composer took Delius under his wing, resulting in Delius devoting his attention to composing full-time. Prior to this he was under the weight of his overbearing father’s wrath. It is no surprise that the young Delius, though British by birth, escapes Britain any chance he gets. Florida was first, France – Paris in particular – would be second. When one considers the variety of influences Delius brings to the table – born into a German family in England, spending time in America, befriending Norwegian composer Grieg and ultimately settling in France at the peak of the influence of the impressionist age – it’s no wonder that the resulting music from Delius’s mind explodes with originality.

For a very in-depth view into the life, work and legacy of this fascinating man, here is a link to a documentary done by the BBC in recent years.

http://youtu.be/uTVhBhPzPQA

Although it is extremely well done and informative, I hesitate to post the actual film here, mainly due to a bit of extra skin in one part that renders it perhaps family unfriendly. For those of less puritanical tastes, it really is quite innocent (although those depicted were decidedly NOT). Of course, the cautionary tale is that Delius’s fascination with the carnal endeavors would prove his own undoing – culminating in his contracting syphilus at 33 in an age where no cure existed. His final days of blindness and paralysis were evidently portrayed well in the Fenby-inspired film above.

What both films also display is the reality, in many cases, that composers can be cantankerous, narcissistic creepos of the highest order. And those who dedicate themselves to bringing that art into being – as Fenby did – do so at the risk of their own sanity. Fenby was not the first, nor last, to tread such a perilous path in the name of art. Total madness, if you ask me. But such can be the price of great music. I doubt it has to be that way. Genius can be a real pain the butt – an excuse for outlandish behavior that ultimately fails to convince (at least for me).

My own exposure to the music of Delius has been limited to four albums I managed to rescue from thrift stores. In some ways the music reminds me of a cross between Debussy and Charles Ives – particularly with the influence of American motifs, as can be heard clearly in the Appalachia piece. Note how all but one of these albums feature the conducting of Sir Thomas Beecham – for many years the sole champion of Delius’s music. Later on Sir John Barbirolli would also help to get Delius’s compositions before the public. If there is any one common aesthetic to every piece I’ve heard (which admittedly is not that many) it sounds to me like freedom or a yearning for freedom.

What I like so much about lesser known composers like Delius is how they can provide for fresh listening experiences, away from the main repertoire. I have to admit, although I am not fully conversant with what has come to be known as that main “rep” – a process I’m still working on (and quite happily) – I do consciously seek out material from the fringes and / or the more “modern” aesthetic. Along with the Delius albums I’ve managed to drag home music by composers such as Nielsen, Rubbra and others whose music I have only just begun to hear. Sometimes even offbeat records can yield surprising favorites.

For example, I’ve been fascinated by those bizarre Westminster Gold releases from the early 70s with the wacky covers. I recently picked up this generic looking thing featuring music from a variety of lesser-known composers – names like Lavry, Voss and Bax. The latter I’d heard of before, but not the others. Well, this funky looking record is pretty awesome! A pleasant surprise, especially when I wasn’t expecting much. Not all “modern” music has to be abrasive and this record is a good example.

For some slightly abrasive modern sounds I decided to pick up this album by Elliot Carter.

The music isn’t overly obnoxious, but it does require a bit of getting one’s ear attuned to the proceedings. Elliot Carter recently left the planet at a rather advanced age. This LP is my first step towards rectifying my total ignorance about his musical output. So far so good!

When one considers how much off-beat music did manage to get released in the “LP-era” it must be remembered that the recording industry as a whole was able to sustain a fair amount of un-commercial music product due to the massive units of Elton John and Fleetwood Mac albums that were sold. The business was large enough to warrant some experimental releases without chipping away too much at the profit margin. As long as the major companies could count on the big sellers, taking a risk at a handful of esoteric releases was not such a big deal. This logic worked even for Kate Bush who never promoted her music in quite the way I’m sure her American record label would have liked her to. The originality of her work was enough to carry her career across decades. In some ways, she and Delius were very much alike in their respective uncompromising stance to their art.

What draws me to this kind of music is also the understanding that music of this nature is quickly receding – not only from the marketplace, but from the very fabric of modern culture. Strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, choruses creating lengthy tone-poems and symphonic expressions have never been at such odds with the majority of musical sounds in the general modern environs. Radio, tv, movies – all of the major sound outlets now depend on digital, electronic / computer based sounds and compositions. Hearing large string sections with orchestral instruments for long stretches is such a radical departure from the everyday sonic norm of the current times – it’s downright radical. To me, a worthy antidote to an already overly-mechanized, technology-dependent, so-called “modern” society. There are other vibrations to consider on the journey, indeed! Keep seeking and listening!

Vintage turntables and Vintage Vinyl ( and Styrene )

Well, here is the most recent addition to the turntable family - a well taken care of vintage Bogen. This is essentially a Lenco re-branded for the American market and featuring the all-important North American electronics ensuring correct speed (European models have different parts that run faster making it almost impossible to hold 33 1/3 speed - yeah I have one of those, but I'll save that story for another time).

The Bogen arrived in beautiful shape. It features a nice stock tonearm - quite well-regarded in Lenco / Bogen circles. The only thing I could fit into that fearsome-looking headshell was an old Shure cart that I got a new "conical" stylus for. Maybe not totally audiophile by today's standards, but it can sound good! The conical stylus is pretty essential for this tonearm which was designed before anybody became concerned about anti-skate issues. So how do you compensate? A little extra weight courtesy of the counter-balance mechanism  - not something you want to do with an elliptical or micro-line stylus! The conical is much more forgiving on the LPs under such barbaric conditions.

Mahler doesn't seem to mind though! I'm playing this recently rescued LP as I type this right now. Talk about a mint vintage disc! I swear this LP looks like it was NEVER PLAYED. And I got it for $1 last weekend. I really like Mahler's First Symphony and I have a bunch already on CD and LP. But this disc looked so clean and sparkly-new I couldn't leave it in the bins. Plus the conductor Sir Adrian Boult I really enjoy as well. And it's a mono PROMO copy that feels like it was pressed not on vinyl, but styrene! Odd for the Everest label since I had yet to see a styrene pressing from that label. Somebody once told me that some labels used styrene as an "audiophile alternative" to vinyl - something about the properties of styrene making for quieter surfaces than vinyl. If that was the logic here, it certainly worked. What a great sounding record and a great vintage performance as well. I can highly recommend this disc for the Mahler buffs out there!

I'm sure there was a stereo counterpart for this album since the release date listed is 1958. But the mono is no slouch here! Discoveries like this remind me how much I love mono classical records.

I also found this classic Mahler book last weekend (as if I should be reading more new books - I still have several I haven't finished yet.......). I picked it up in spite of the fact that the author - the former Mrs. Mahler - is rumored to have played fast and loose with some facts here and there. No matter - the best stuff here is really the letters Mahler wrote and received. Just glancing through the book I noticed an entertaining letter that Mahler got from Arnold Schoenberg who gives an unorthodox yet enthusiastic review of Mahler's Third Symphony (which AS had recently heard performed live). Check it out:

Now if there ever was a wildly subjective review of a symphony here is the grand example! Neat to read considering how Schoenberg's own music seems to be so devoid of feeling (at least on the surface). Just this letter alone was worth the price of the book. With any luck I'll get to read more this coming fall and winter.

Speaking of sparkly-clean vintage LPs - here's a Steinberg / Pittsburgh SO platter I picked up recently that also looked totally untouched by a stylus. Can't fathom why since the performances were really enjoyable.

Folks must have shunned mono classical LPs like they could give you leprosy or something. The above picture really doesn't capture how clean this baby really is. Sounds great!

Here's a few nifty Westminster LPs I scored recently.

This Schubert album is from the early 50s and the cover art is a giveaway. This era saw a lot of modern-looking covers and I sure like 'em. This album also had a different style to the usual red Westminster label. See here:

Check out that scripted lettering for the Westminster logo. I don't think I'd seen that before. Most red labels had a more stylized Westminster logo like this:

The above record also carries a 1952 release date, but is obviously a few 40 record releases away from the Schubert LP above. Here's the cover for this album - a modern-ish composer, in fact!

According to the liner notes Franz Schmidt was from Vienna and lived between 1874 and 1939. Although he was a contemporary of the more radical composers like Schoenberg, et al.... Schmidt was more conventional with modern strains through his work. The above LP is a good example of such an aesthetic. Quite enjoyable!

Though the Westminster LPs are not quite as mint as those above the sound is really excellent. I especially like that early 50s cover art. By the mid to late 50s, the covers began looking more conventional and, basically - BORING. Why more people don't seek these things out I have no idea. As long as I can keep finding them in thrift stores I can't complain!

It's been awhile since I've written here - some changes have blown through my life lately and finding the time to keep up is a challenge, but my passion for this stuff goes on! Keep listening and seeking!

 

Bruckner, Haydn and 20th Century Freakout Music……………

In the last entry, I mentioned picking up a nice box set of various composers’ works as conducted by Eugen Jochum. Included in that set are entire cycles of Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner symphonies. At this point I have to say I feel pretty comfortable with most (if not all) of the symphonies by Beethoven and Brahms. Okay, so I haven’t memorized every nuance of those scores, but I can tell the Brahms 3rd from the Beethoven 3rd by now – not a small accomplishment for me! Symphonies can be pretty dang long works!

A big selling point of the box for me was the cycle of Bruckner symphonies. I was especially pleased with the performances of the first and second symphonies. The third symphony kinda threw me once again – I’ve had an ongoing tug of war with that symphony for awhile now. What really shocked me was how unfamiliar Bruckner’s 4th Symphony sounded to me when I played the Jochum version. Odd since this symphony – also known as Bruckner’s “Romantic” symphony – was one of the first extended pieces of music I latched onto when I started this crazy journey down the “serious music” path seriously. Then again – it had been awhile since I’d spent time with any Bruckner symphony. For awhile there I was really keen to hear them all, yet I don't think I made it through all of them. The 4th, though, I really thought I had down cold!

So it was when I recently made my yearly, summer run down to the Princeton Record Exchange I kept my eyes peeled for another Bruckner 4th. I managed to find a nice, vintage specimen 2LP set housed in the same kind of box my old copy of Mahler’s 8th came in – probably from the early 1950s. Listening to this version I felt I managed to reclaim my understanding of this great work (as best as I’m able). 

The sound here is pretty good all things considered. I know I have a few other recordings of Otterloo conducting the Hauge Philharmonic on Epic. Can't say I know anything of his story, though he seems to have been more of a regional figure than a world-known conductor. Unless that's just my own ignorance, which is always a good bet!

Here's the CD where I first heard Bruckner's 4th:

There are still a ton of these early 90s budget discs floating around. Again, some of the performances are better than others - all usually feature regional European orchestras and lesser known conductors. Yet I still find Bruckner's 4th on this disc really enjoyable.

I remember seeing a website devoted to critiquing all of the PILZ "Vienna Masters" compact discs. My cousin bought a bunch of these back in the 90s and gave me some which I held onto in case I wanted to get a little more into classical, which I did. The above CD was a "gateway" disc for me and I played it a lot. Bruckner's 4th was the first lesser-known symphony (as opposed to Beethoven's 5th) that I'd really enjoyed. Why the Jochum version didn't register when I played it - who knows..........I haven’t headed back to the Jochum box yet as I’ve been derailed by more vinyl purchases. As if I need more than this.....here's the bulk of the classical LPs I've dragged home (but not all of them, mind you!).

 I know I’m going to be cursing all these platters in a few weeks time since I’m likely to be moving. At least I’m not moving too far away from where I am now and I’m not in a hurried situation to move quickly. Still I’ll have to relocate a lot of LPs and figure out how they can fit in my new living situation. Record collecting can be fun, but its not always convenient. And when there’s so much great music to be discovered, for such a small investment it’s hard to hold back. So while most folks seem to be purging their physical music sources……..I’m still hauling them in! Here are some recent results:

Three box sets of Haydn Symphonies (from #57 to #81). Four LPs per set. $1 for each set. Nice early 70s London pressings made in England. Maybe not mint, but certainly strong VG+ and not abused. These were great to score since I have a nice set of Paris Symphonies (#82 - 87) on CD that I like. And I'm sure I have some of the London Symphonies somewhere. Of course, these pieces are not very long - about one symphony per side of an LP. Haydn sometimes also gets slagged by critics for composing too much "same-y" material which is hard to argue. However, the samey-ness probably had more to do with the demands of his patrons and their tastes. I mean, how far out are you going to get when you're being paid to write stuff to please the princes? Honestly, things aren't much different today. Modern music has its own familiar sound and recycled motifs, doesn't it? So in Haydn's time people expected to hear those sawing 8th and 16th note patterns over and over and over. What really makes listening to Haydn interesting for me, is when I hear unexpected deviations from the saw, saw, saw routine. That's where Haydn's creativity really lives. It's kinda like the blues - the basic forms are simple enough, but it's how you get creative within those forms.

I picked up this LP along with the others. Even though I had #70 I didn't have #48. Plus I really liked the conductor's name - Raymond LEPPARD. Sounds kinda rock-n-roll doesn't it? I have no clue about him really, but I liked the name and the LP sounds good too. An early 70s Philips LP. Cool!

At the same place I got the Haydn, there was this box set of early Mozart symphonies. Again - 3 discs for $1. Mozart's early symphonies don't get a lot of attention perhaps due to the developing nature of his talent as a young composer. So far, though, I'm finding a lot of enjoyment in hearing these lesser-known works. And these pieces are really brief - 13 symphonies over 6 LP sides? Don't blink or you're gonna miss them! Pretty good sound for a budget, early 70s release too!

Although the music is what drives my thirst for new records to discover, I have to admit I like album cover art too. Recently I picked up these records because they looked to be in good shape and I really liked the cover art. Have a look:

The albums run the gamut of the eras - from Bach to Brahms to Copland and the above LP with more obscure American composers of the late 1800s / early 1900s. Good music - great album covers!

These were all from Princeton Record Exchange. Where I really got excited was in the bin for modern classical. I found a couple of Varese records and this cool LP:

The cover says "mono" but I'm happy the disc is stereo since it's so psychedelic! Early electronic music is fun stuff to listen to! I immediately recognized the album cover from a picture I saw a while ago of John Lennon holding the same record. See here:

Considering Lennon's state of mind in 1967, I'll bet he really liked this record! No doubt it would help inspire his later work on "Revolution 9". I like 20th Century freakout music just as well as Hadyn's saw, saw, saw in its own way. Why put limits on anything? Especially music!

Alright - one last item..........

Last year I did a little deal on the anniversary of the introduction of the 33&1/3 long playing microgroove disc. Since then I've been on the lookout for the first record in that series from June of 1948 - catalog number ML 4001. Well, I got close yesterday when I bagged ML 4003! Looked a little dirty, but the grooves had integrity. Plus the sleeve had a different design to it with the flap at the top and the sides that folded over (unlike later one-piece sleeves of the same look). So this must have been among the first batch of those earliest Columbia LPs from 1948.

So, there you go - it isn't always about the music for me. There's all sorts of cool angles that make record hunting fun. Keep 'em spinning!