Classical Convert

I Don’t Like Gergiev’s Prokofiev

I’m having a hard time with Gergiev’s Prokofiev symphony cycle. I am familiar with Ozawa’s right now, and switching my listening is a bit like dragging my ears down a blackboard. They’re, like, too bloody crisp! That’s something that I never thought would be something to complain about, overcrispness, I find it well hard to deal with really old acoustically smudged-up recordings, the modern ten thousand mikes around each instrument approach is just great by me.

There’s something frightening about this though. It’s not even a little bit smudgy. It’s lacking smudginess. It almost sounds like it’s a string quartet. (albeit a string quartet with, you know, a piano and brass and tonnes of thumping percussion) Apparently Prokofiev is Gergiev’s favorite composer, and I suppose I can see how the clinical precision fits with Sergei P’s mechanical, percussive, writing.

But I like my Prokofiev with more of a rushing, gathering of sound, and quicker where it counts! Gergiev seems to flop all over the place in sections which should be a constant, driving tempo.

Maybe I’m just not used to it. It’s hard to switch across to a new interpretation sometimes.

A haul-load of music

Today (actually right bang on now, 11:15am) is my birthday. I’m an ancient and decaying 26 years old now, pretty much ready for the chopping block and glue factory. At least there’s a bit of moderation involved in the aging process with the whole old gift giving and receiving routine. These days or years all my presents are pretty specifically specified, which maybe makes it a little less exciting, but ultimately a bucketload more satisfying. This year, from me dad and stepmum I got:

• Beethoven, the late string quartets - I finally feel ready to taken on Beethoven’s quartets after exposing myself to Shostakovich and Bartok’s, and sliding my way into old Ludwig’s symphonies and piano sonatas. Initial listenings sound complex and subtler (I hate that word, bad, bad me. I’ll let me off though, since it is my birthday) than the dissonances and experimentation I find so attractive in the 20th century dudes.
• Prokofiev, string quartets and Cello sonata - I don’t think I have any of Prokofiev chamber music (except for three of the piano sonatas) which is a sad lacking coz he’s such a well up there favourite of mine. Initally they sound surprisingly… classical. Less avant-garde than I am used to from Sergei P.
• Shostakovich, piano quintet - The last missing piece of Shostakovich’s chamber music in my collection! It also has yet another recording of Schnittke’s piano quintet on it. Since it’s Naxos’ copy it’s probably even the same performance as I already have. Ah well.

I have tonnes of listening ahead of me, how glorious. They are all ripped and ready already. Prokofiev is playing as I type.

Prokofievified

I got me page on Prokofiev up and running now. Two whole composers! It’s almost like an internet legend by this point. I think I need a few more and then I’ll actually submit it to search engines and stuff. Lets see… who do I need? Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Brahms. Maybe Bartok, Schnittke, Mahler (although I don’t really know enough about Mahler…) and really I should put Schubert up as well. With those bad-boys I could actually let people see it.

Last night I though of another thing I’d like a lot… I should make a page with snippets but it should be my favorite parts of certain pieces. I could do one page for each composition I really like. That’d be good.

I think my piano playing is going somewhere, I can sort of play stuff with both hands and not very notes, very slowly. I want to be able to play without looking at my hands very, very badly (well actually I can do it very, very badly already, har har)