Who do you consider to be the GOAT amongst classical music composers?

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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Dan Lobb said:
This performance of the two Gershwin works will be broadcast on MEZZO television channel in North America this upcoming month....I will be recording it.
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The quality of the sound for this broadcast is exceptional, good for these particular works.

The use of television and broadcasts allows these concerts to take place without much of a live audience or ticket sales. Television revenues are sufficient.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttk2MvpU2UY
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Currently available online from BBC3, a recent live performance of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 8, played by Son with the Slovenia Symphony Orchestra. Slovenia is the homeland of my own piano professor, whose father and uncle were leaders of the Slovenian independence movement in the 1930's.

Move the bar to the right to reveal this performance, the second last of the program, click near the end of the performance track, at 4:57:48.
Available for the next 22 days.

www.bbc.co.uk

Through the Night - Lavrangas and Tchaikovsky in Athens - BBC Sounds

ERT National Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Mozart year is a chance to examine little-known Mozart works, like this tribute to Bach, played here by a contemporary pianist of mine, Jane Coop (she studied at U of Toronto, I studied at Western U....I got the better of that deal).

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
The joyful finale of this Mozart piano quartet with Jane Coop at the piano.
Jane Coop's two principal teachers were well-connected to the Viennese tradition, at University of Toronto she studied with Anton Kuerti, a student of Rudolf Serkin, and later she studied at Peabody with Leon Fleisher, a student of Schnabel. My wife and I heard Fleisher perform with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra a few years ago, he played a preliminary performance of the Brahms A Major piano quartet, and then a Mozart two-piano concerto with his wife. Fleisher passed on last year, another link with the past has gone. Fleisher performed the Mozart piano concerto #12 in 2018 with the TSO, his last appearance, although he continued to teach at the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music until his passing.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR-dWbPsBd8
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
In this Mozart year, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is releasing a recent concert designed for the pandemic era, featuring the principal oboist of the orchestra, Sarah Jeffrey, in Mozart's oboe concerto. The oboist's parents were fellow music students of mine, her mother was a fellow piano student with my piano professor, at Western University in the early 1970's.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Jane Coop has performed with many orchestras world wide in Mozart concertos. Here is one performance.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOJYru2gs4A

Last month, Jane Coop performed this concerto with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on the virtual concert hall.

www.theconcerthall.ca

Bach, Agócs & Mozart

VSO Associate Concertmaster Timothy Steeves is the soloist in J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Violin in D Minor and a new Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra from Kati Agócs, whose music is described as “fluidity and austere beauty” by the Boston Globe. Vancouver’s own Jane Coop leads the VSO...
www.theconcerthall.ca www.theconcerthall.ca
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
I was attending a lecture by Dr. Philip Downs in 1970, at our music building at Western U, when he suddenly stopped in mid-sentence, interrupted by a rehearsal in the next room, this first movement of the Mozart G minor piano quartet. The anguished emotions expressed in this movement made it impossible for him to continue his train of thought.
Going ahead in time to 2005, I was driving to Dr. Downs' new neighbourhood, he met me at the turn-off for the development, to give directions. After getting into the car, my supercharged Jaguar S-Type, he told me that I had removed a mental block he had sustained for over forty years. In 1962, he was a passenger in a Jaguar driving through the English countryside and experienced a serious auto accident, and could never sit in a Jaguar after that. Music can express the most inner emotional experiences.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_D2gvDreBY
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
The final movement of this summit work of Mozart shows a rejuvenation and joyful outlook following the sorrow and reflection of the first two movements.
I have always associated this work with Dr. Downs, it always impressed me as a personal work to his own experience. Another professor had told me that Dr. Downs' first wife had been killed in an auto accident, perhaps the same one that he later mentioned to me from 1962. He would later remarry and achieve great success in his profession.

Dr. Downs' book on the classical era, entitled "Classical Music", relates how Mozart was contracted to compose a longer series of piano quartets, but the contract was cancelled when the world premier of this first piano quartet was strongly criticized. The sorrowful emotions of the first movement were deemed to be too disturbing for the casual audience of the time.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkjfznKg8k

wwnorton.com

Classical Music

, Classical Music, A Concise History from Gluck to Beethoven, , 9780500202104
wwnorton.com wwnorton.com
 
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the tennis oracle

the tennis oracle

Rookie
Not sure if you already posted this Dan, but here’s a lovely live performance of #15 from Yeol Eum. I’m finding I much prefer live performances over studio recordings in the current covid era, and the climax of the sublime 2nd mvt at 15:00 - 15:36 nearly brought tears to my eyes, esp in light of hearing the Proms has been canceled again. The 3rd mvt is pure Amadeus exuberance and charm!

 
the tennis oracle

the tennis oracle

Rookie
Dan Lobb said:
In this Mozart year, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is releasing a recent concert designed for the pandemic era, featuring the principal oboist of the orchestra, Sarah Jeffrey, in Mozart's oboe concerto. The oboist's parents were fellow music students of mine, her mother was a fellow piano student with my piano professor, at Western University in the early 1970's.

Click to expand...

Here's a wonderful live performance of the oboe concerto from Francois Leleux and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. I'm in awe of the lung capacity of wind soloists!

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
My own musical mentor, Dr. Downs, was a wonderful violinist, and had been a student and friend of Sir Neville Marriner. The two men were both ex-British Army officers, and shared the same views on Mozart. Dr. Downs passed on in 2014, and Sir Neville Marriner passed on in 2016. Sir Neville's final recording was of the Mozart 21st piano concerto with Yeol Eum Son.
On the one year anniversary of Marriner's death, Son performed this tribute to him, the slow movement of the first piano quartet.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Historical tradition in Mozart performance has been well preserved. Jane Coop was a principal student of Leon Fleisher, who in turn was a student of Artur Schnabel.
Here is Schnabel's recording of the Mozart G minor piano quintet first movement, taken from the private collection of Lawrence of Arabia.
This movement is an innovative structure for Mozart, because in the recapitulation towards the close of the movement, Mozart upsets traditional sonata form and transforms the major key material from the beginning section into a minor key. This has the effect of intensifying the anguished emotions of the movement, creating a dynamic and operatic form which transcends the static nature of classical norms.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6j_dUCKR1o
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
At Western University, I chose to play the following sonata for my first year examination major piece in 1971. Just before my examination, my own piano professor told me "Play well." I was well prepared and played without a single error, and I thought well done interpretively.
The system was for a piano professor other than my own to provide the marking, and this particular professor felt compelled to deduct substantially. I was puzzled until my own professor explained that this was standard for this particular marker, even my professor's famous students had experienced the same from him. Today, all the past is forgiven, and this gentleman is very friendly, gave me a warm handshake the last time we met a few years ago. He recently admitted to my own piano professor that her students were always much above his own.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlVnshoppc4
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is a young man playing the Mozart "Young Man" (Jeunehomme) piano concerto. This pianist visited my piano professor just before signing a lifetime recording contract with Deutsche Grammaphon when he was 14 years old. He continued with his musical education at the Glenn Gould school, part of the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music, where Leon Fleisher taught, as well as signing the recording contract, which is exactly what I would have recommended to him.


https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kjsGXshEIo:1938
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Mozart's final piano concerto, No. 27, invokes an atmosphere of elegy and poignance, a farewell to the form. Dr. Downs, in his book on Classical Music, details the various technical devices used by Mozart to create this impression.
Here is Richter with an expressive performance of it.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJYGtw-zh8
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Dr. Downs, my music history professor at Western U, completed a study of the themes, both musical and literary, which composed the structure of Cosi fan Tutte, Mozart's supreme comic opera. This study was available at the Western Music Library, probably still is.
In his larger book "Classical Music", he wrote that "Mozart's position is not critical of feminine weakness...no one in this opera is without fault...but rather is one of deep sympathy with the human condition, with human weakness and particularly with human suffering. If the characters in this story, and we who watch it unfold, have learned anything when the original couples are reunited, it must be that one's expectations of other human beings must not be set too high."
Here is another student from Western U, who I presume must have studied something with Dr. Downs at Western, Michael Schade in Cosi fan Tutte at the Vienna State Opera in Vienna.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egi7fxTEUCQ
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
A few years ago, my wife and I attended a live performance of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte by the York Opera Company in Toronto. That performance featured a superb performance of Despina by a singer who had coached us for a few years, and who helped me to develop my own high tenor tones. My renewed tenor performances included three Christmas concerts at a senior's home near where I am typing this, where famed opera singer Jon Vickers was among the residents. I managed to hit the high note solo in O Holy Night, I like to think that Vickers enjoyed it.
Here is that soprano in another operatic performance, Die Fledermaus. A waltz tune.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
In Philip Downs' book "Classical Music", discussing Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), Downs identifies the passage where Tamino and Pamina meet and undergo the trials of fire and water, here at 2:26 and following, as the summit of the opera. Downs points out that Pamina actually leads Tamino, her rescuer, through the trials, and Tamino repeats Pamina's declarations, which give success in the trials. Just as Beethoven gives the lead role in the marital duo of "Fidelio" to the wife, where the wife is the rescuer, Mozart also seems to give Pamina the lead role in the salvation scheme of Die Zauberflote.

Here is Michael Schade as Tamino with the Vienna State Opera. Schade learned his vocal craft at Western U, my own music school, with the same vocal teacher as I had. Schade would certainly have studied music history with Dr. Downs.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pHR5haevxw
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is another classic performance of the Magic Flute with the Vienna State Opera, this time at the Salzburg Festival in 1997, also with Michael Schade as Tamino, and a legendary cast.

Sarastro: Rene Pape. Tamino: Michael Schade. Speaker: Hermann Prey. Queen of the night: Natalie Dessay. Pamina: Sylvia McNair. First lady: Melanie Diener. Second lady: Norine Burgess. Third lady: Helene Perraguin. Papagena: Olga Schalaeva. Papageno: Matthias Goerne. Monostatos: Robert Woerle. Three spirits: Soloists of the Tölzer Knabenchor. Three slaves: Henryk Antoni Opiela, Lajos Kovacs, Pavel Janicek. Armed man 1: Christian Elsner. Armed man 2: Andreas Macco. Christoph von Dohnányi - Wiener Philharmoniker. Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor. Achim Freyer.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTIhpbnJMXw
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Mozart's Turkish March is here presented in an arrangement by Volodos, performed live in the Sir Neville Marriner Memorial Concert.

 
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SystemicAnomaly

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
For me, it's a toss up between Wolfgang Amadeus GOAT, Igor Fyodorovich GOAT & Johann Sebastian GOAT (not related to each other)

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SystemicAnomaly

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
Dan Lobb said:
Three decent choices. I would accept two of them into the all-time top 3, I would add Beethoven and subtract Stravinsky.
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As much as I appreciate the music of Ludwig, my top GOAT music = Le Sacre du Printemps. Followed by his two other commissioned ballets, Firebird and Petrushka. These are easily the 3 most important pieces of music written in the 20th century. They significantly influenced the music that followed in film, classical, rock, jazz and possibly other genre.

Not saying that the revolutionary music of Ludwig was any less important than that of Igor. The latter just happens to be my personal favorite. Followed by the music of Johann Sebastian and Wolfgang Amadeus.
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Stravinsky was a great composer, bringing neoclassicism into the concert hall. Stravinsky produces great visions and striking materials, however, the materials are usually static and not part of an organic structure.
Here is one of my favourite Stravinsky works, his finest piano/orchestra work, with a Russian pianist and a Canadian orchestra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XikrPlgDCng
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Another great piano/orchestra work from the 20th century, performed here by Yuja Wang and the Berlin Philharmonic, the pianist here captures the complex contrapuntal lines in this knuckle-busting concerto. (Stephen Kovacevich actually broke his fingers playing this work although he made a superb recording of it.)

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOHl_X_OoIk
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Yuja Wang seems to take on some of the most unplayable piano concertos, including the Rachmaninoff Third, seen here with conductor Myung Whun Chung and the great Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra two years ago, just before the pandemic.

My wife and I heard her play this concerto in 2011 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, we were sitting right above her and had a perfect view of her hands in motion. Later I had some business with some members of the orchestra, and was standing about two feet away from her, talking with someone else. Unfortunately I had no excuse to ask for an autograph from this Canadian-trained pianist. Such is life in the music business.

The concerto begins with a Russian Orthodox Christian chant melody, which generates the entire work, appearing in altered forms in all three movements.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHre-G8wlb4
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Bartok's various piano concertos (four, including the Two Piano Concerto) are now entering the standard repertoire.

Here is Yeol Eum Son in a very recent performance of the Bartok Two Piano Sonata, the precursor to the Two Piano Concerto.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
As a prominent contribution to this Mozart celebration year, here is a recent performance from June this year of the 22nd piano concerto.
This soloist is the foremost Mozart player of our era, sustaining and shaping the long melodic lines as naturally as if she had composed them herself.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is a very recent performance of a Brahms masterpiece, from the Pyeongchang Music Festival in South Korea. This violinist is becoming a major international player.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
I recognize the conductor of the concert above of the Brahms Violin Concerto, Chiyong Chang. He conducted the performance of the Greig Piano Concerto which my wife and I attended at the Seoul Performing Arts Center in September, 2018. We were given tickets as a gift from the pianist's tailor, and sat near the front on the keyboard side, clearly able to see the solo pianist's hands. We had met the solo pianist, Minsoo Sohn, some years earlier in Toronto. One of my former fellow piano students had been on the jury of the Calgary Honens Competition which Minsoo Sohn had won in 2006.
A great concert, which concluded with a superb performance of the Nielsen Fourth Symphony. It begins with excerpts from Peer Gynt. Minsoo Sohn's tailor, who had given the tickets to us as a gift, did a superb work to create this performing suit of Minsoo Sohn.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PpiZDw8lDA
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
And just last month, at the apparent opening of a music festival, the same conductor, Chiyong Chang conducted the Mozart Piano Concerto 21 with a soloist who has made this particular work her calling card and identifying achievement. Unapproachable level of excellence. The cadenzas she plays are her own compositions.

 
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Deleted member 629564

Guest
Dan Lobb said:
The cadenzas she plays are her own compositions.
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In this area I'm very conservative, to be honest I do not like cadenzas written by a performer.

Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 by Andras Schiff with his own cadenzas was one the most terrible performances I've ever heard live :confused:
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
threehandedbackhand said:
In this area I'm very conservative, to be honest I do not like cadenzas written by a performer.

Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 by Andras Schiff with his own cadenzas was one the most terrible performances I've ever heard live :confused:
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Mozart did not leave cadenzas for No. 21, so there is no choice but to use someone else's. Son's cadenzas for this concerto are simpler and closer to Mozart's own style than any other cadenzas used by pianists for this work. The ones by Serkin are much more elaborate and do not sound like Mozart. The ones by Son above sound like Mozart could have written them.
 
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Deleted member 629564

Guest
Dan Lobb said:
Mozart did not leave cadenzas for No. 21, so there is no choice but to use someone else's. Son's cadenzas for this concerto are simpler and closer to Mozart's own style than any other cadenzas used by pianists for this work. The ones by Serkin are much more elaborate and do not sound like Mozart. The ones by Son above sound like Mozart could have written them.
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By the way, what do you think about these computer imitations of Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Brahms, and Gershwin created by David Cope?
interlude.hk

Can a computer compose beautiful classical music?

We look at the work of David Cope.
interlude.hk

AI algorithms are so powerful nowadays.
 
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