Carlos Kleiber 1930-2004

Maybe I should try that Brahms 4 - I've never been entirely convinced by the piece up until now (although Wand makes a pretty good case).

Did you see that his Beethoven 5&7 (another contender for the best performances ever recorded, in my book anyway) is now available on SACD as well? Definitely on my shopping list.
 
Brahms 4 - the greatest symphony ever written IMHO. Also IMHO the first piece of expressionist music, the intensity of emotion in this piece would be totally overwhelming were it not for the fact that Brahms exercises such restraint with his materials and uses formal structures reaching back to Bach as a framework to anchor the emotion to. By using these formal structures, Brahms was able to reach an intensity of expression that other romantic composers could only aspire to, yet his music never threatens to break down into hysteria, over-emoting or pastiche that can be heard in Mahler, Strauss or Wagner.

BTW I love the works of these three other composers, but there is just something about Brahms.

BTW II - I've also had quite a lot of red wine tonight so may well be over-emoting myself about Brahms 4 :D .
 
alanbeeb said:
Brahms 4 - the greatest symphony ever written IMHO.
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Sorry folks. I love 1 & 2 and the violin concerto, and the piano concerti most of all, but 3 and 4 just don't float my boat. Too much intellectualising without enough connection to the inner being. Even I think Bach did that kind of thing so much better!
 
The trouble with Brahms is that he was very good at the classical symphony type thing, and wrote as Graham says quite intellectually sound music. He was no innovator thought and really the Germanic Symphonic Tradition nearly finished with him, but Bruckner first and later Mahler started to mess with the formula which extended it's life. Brahm's music is wonderful, but it's not great in a historical context, he was undoubtably conservative with a small c, mimicing Beethoven in many ways
 

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