The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #90211 Message #3835109
Posted By: Steve Shaw
26-Jan-17 - 08:32 PM
Thread Name: Classical music - what makes you listen?
Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
My this week's listenings so far have been Beethoven's Quartet in E flat Op. 127, his second-last piano sonata, the one in A flat Op. 110, Bach's B minor Mass and his amazing Magnificat which I caught by accident on Radio 3 this morning. Think I'll have a Wolfgang week next week!
I don't get on at all with Elgar's Cello Concerto. I find it choppy, whiny and lugubrious. Over-exposure on Classic FM probably hasn't helped. On the other hand, piano concertos by Mozart and Beethoven apart, I think that the Dvorak Cello Concerto is one of the greatest of all concertos, up there with Beethoven's Violin Concerto. If you can, listen to Slava Rostropovich playing the Dvorak on August 21 1968 in a Prom concert in London. The USSR State Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov. That was the very day that Russian tanks rolled into Prague. There were anti-Soviet protests both outside and inside the Albert Hall but the concert went ahead. The tension in the performance between Svetlanov's orchestra and Slava, who bitterly opposed the invasion, was palpable. It might not be the greatest technical performance of the Concerto ever, but it made for a very poignant historical document. I think you can hear it online.