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

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra presented two central Mendelssohn works last calendar year, the Violin Concerto with James Ehnes as soloist, and the First Piano Concerto with Yeol Eum Son as soloist.
Both great performances.
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
James Ehnes and Yeol Eum Son will be participating in this upcoming summer chamber music festival in Norway with a group of elite musicians. The festival director is Leif Ove Andsnes, a great pianist.


Ehnes and Son will collaborate on the Brahms Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1.

Here is another Canadian violinist with a Canadian pianist performing the same work in 1980.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Also in this Norwegian chamber music festival, Son will perform the Brahms sonata for clarinet and piano with Sharon Kam, who plays a deeper sounding clarinet than usual, appropriate for these Brahms works.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here they are, the Mozart Piano Sonatas in all of their variety of forms and expressions. This runs through all of them without break, No. 1 to 18, just keep listening.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Jane Coop is another Mozart pianist of great renown, here in a recent performance of one of her calling card works, the Piano Quartet No. 2.

This performance is introduced by my former fellow piano student Arthur Rowe. Expect to see Arthur before long.

The violin sonata which precedes the Mozart is a formidable work, composed by Dame Ethyl Smyth, one of the most successful women composers ever, and an avid tennis player in the early days of the sport.

The Mozart begins at 49:30.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU1tm8imksw:1695
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Another major piano concerto from Benjamin Britten was the Diversions, composed for the left-handed pianist Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in WWI.

Wittgenstein commissioned a large number of outstanding concertos for left hand, from Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten, Strauss, Korngold, Hindemith, Schmidt and others, all of them great works.

Britten composed Diversions during the 1940 Battle of Britain, when the fate of WWII was at stake. Although a pacifist, Britten would return to Britain and serve as an air raid fireman. Britten was given exemption from military service or pacifist war duty as a medic on the battlefield on the grounds that he was composing war propaganda music for the British Broadcasting Corporation's wartime broadcasts.

Here is the National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine, another war-torn country, with the Britten meditation on war.

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

G.O.A.T.
Here is an appreciative review of the performance above, very appreciative.

Here it is, a major Rachmaninoff Three, which could be classified as an Easter Concerto. A songful, reflective realization of the depths of this work.

From the review above,

"....her playing was measured and contemplative, not least in the first movement cadenza where she controlled and shaped the shifting moods and nuances to mesmerising effect."

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qej1vdNZtU
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is the Russian Orthodox chant melody for Easter which provided the prototype from which Rachmaninoff built his Third Piano Concerto. This melody is played in the first phrases of the work, and is found in varied forms throughout all three movements of the concerto, and binds it together into a dramatic personal development and transformation.

The chant is sung for the third day of Easter, on the Sunday of resurrection, the somewhat mournful tone of the chant gives way to rejoicing for the Resurrection of Christ and the freedom of humanity from the weight of rebellion against God, and achieves reconciliation with the Saviour.
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Have just purchased our first TSO tickets since the days of COVID ended.....to hear Seong-Jin Cho perform the Ravel Left-Hand Concerto with the TSO in September conducted by the new music director Gustavo Gimeno, first time hearing him. Tickets are hard to get even for three concerts, there are 100,000 Koreans living in Toronto, automatic sell-out.


Also on the program, the Ravel Rhapsodie Espagnole. Gimeno is a Spanish Ravel conductor of the first order.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is some music from perhaps the most underrated of the great composers, a work which I have never heard before this recent performance from last month.

This music derives from a different time and society where communal music making in the home was a common pursuit.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is some chamber music from Mozart which was designed for home performance and entertainment, perhaps for a group of friends in a private house.

This married duo performer group has superb credentials.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
More Beethoven from Son up ahead, this upcoming performance of the Beethoven Hammerklavier sonata which will be broadcast on Aug. 17, the site is already prepared for the performance.

Here is the live Beethoven Hammerklavier performance from two days ago.

This is a superbly structured performance with a lyrical and polyphonic emphasis, revealing the construction of this Magnum Opus of Beethoven piano sonatas.

This pianist's technique is completely in control of the elements of the work, a true symphonic edifice. The contrapuntal sections of the first and third movements were a hommage from Beethoven to Bach, Beethoven writing after the completion of the work, "There, Bach, I hope that you are satisfied now."

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Household music-making was the strata from which chamber music emerged. Here is some more Mozart, in this case an opera aria from Die Zauberflote, arranged for cello and piano by no less than Beethoven himself.

The performers here are colleagues at Western University where I studied, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi cellist and Ronald Turini on the piano. My favourite recording of this work.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Not satisfied with merely one set of variations from themes from Mozart's " Die Zauberflöte", Beethoven constructed a second set, also for cello and piano.

Why was this work never published by Beethoven? Perhaps the subject matter, a meditation on marriage, was too personal for the composer at the time to share with the general public.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
At Western University in the 1970s four well-known faculty members formed the Quartet Canada, violinist Steven Staryk cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, violist Gerald Stanick, and pianist Ronald Turini.

Here is a live broadcast performance of some Brahms from 1977.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Have just purchased our first TSO tickets since the days of COVID ended.....to hear Seong-Jin Cho perform the Ravel Left-Hand Concerto with the TSO in September conducted by the new music director Gustavo Gimeno, first time hearing him. Tickets are hard to get even for three concerts, there are 100,000 Koreans living in Toronto, automatic sell-out.


Also on the program, the Ravel Rhapsodie Espagnole. Gimeno is a Spanish Ravel conductor of the first order.

A magnificent concert with the TSO and Cho at the keyboard. My wife and I had superb seats at eye level with the pianist and a clear view of his arms and hands.

Cho himself served some time in the South Korean military a couple of years ago, and was posted at a border lookout at the DMZ. which are isolated, scary positions. He stated that it was a frightening experience. I could feel his visceral commitment to the contents of the Ravel Left-Hand Concerto, which details Ravel's own experiences in WWI as an ambulance driver. This was Cho's first ever performance of the Ravel concerto.

Excellent review here,


"A master of the broad brushstroke as well as of pointillistic refinement, Cho also displayed his understanding of Ravel’s distinctive tones of voice, from biting sarcasm to poetically hued sorrow to steely determination, topped off by a fine grasp of the overall architecture and frictionless integration with the orchestra. Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnet no. 104 made for an achingly intimate encore: further proof of the Korean pianist’s breadth and depth of total musicianship."
 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
James Ehnes and Yeol Eum Son will be participating in this upcoming summer chamber music festival in Norway with a group of elite musicians. The festival director is Leif Ove Andsnes, a great pianist.


Ehnes and Son will collaborate on the Brahms Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1.

Here is another Canadian violinist with a Canadian pianist performing the same work in 1980.

That chamber series featuring elite musicians, led off by violinist James Ehnes and pianist Yeol Eum Son was a major success.

Here is a sample of the opening performance of the Brahms violin/piano sonata No. 1 with Ehnes and Son in great form.

Oops, it is on the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival Facebook only, no go. Will look for another source.
 
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Crocodile

G.O.A.T.
Classical composers relied on talent. I like people who can see music and execute. People think the dude waving his hands has something todo with each musicians sheet. Its like claiming the cart is leading the horse.

Latter day Billie Currie from Ultravox
 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
James Ehnes and Yeol Eum Son will be participating in this upcoming summer chamber music festival in Norway with a group of elite musicians. The festival director is Leif Ove Andsnes, a great pianist.


Ehnes and Son will collaborate on the Brahms Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1.

Here is another Canadian violinist with a Canadian pianist performing the same work in 1980.

Son also performed the Brahms Piano Trio No. 2 together with James Ehnes on violin and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, another rising star.
Here is from the review of the performance at the Rosendal Festival,

"....on came the dream team of James Ehnes (violin) Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello) and Yoel-Eum Son (piano) to play Brahms’ Op.87 – his second piano trio in C major. And boy did they play it! It was the best performance in the festival so far. Ehnes was the sensible grown-up of the group. Kanneh-Mason (who had performed the same trio recently in Oxford with his siblings Braimah and Isata) seemed nervous for the first minute or two, but quickly got into the zone. The outer movements were wonderfully fleet and joyful with big colours and wild contrasts. Son’s ravishing solo piano phrases lit up the second movement. The third movement scherzo was lightening fast and tighter than Count Basie’s rhythm section! The three musicians could be seen enjoying and appreciating each other’s playing more and more as they progressed. It was a very special performance. Five stars!"

Here is another historic performance of this trio with the legendary violinist Szigeti, cellist Casals, and Dame Myra Hess on piano.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
The most successful American composer is the product of the Jazz Age, George Gershwin.
Here is Gershwin's first classical success, Rhapsody in Blue.

Gershwin finished his life's work in Hollywood, where he was putting the finishing touches on his Hollywood scoring career before a planned return to New York City and devotion to a purely classical schedule, a projected symphony, another opera, a string quartet, and a setting of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address for solo voice and chorus. These projects were taken up and completed by Gershwin's fellow composers after his death.



At the time of his sudden death, Gershwin was living in a mansion in Palm Springs, California, playing tennis on the courts on the property, and was engaged to marry Paulette Goddard, the movie star. He collapsed in her presence and never regained consciousness from a brain tumor in 1937.

 
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Bartelby

Bionic Poster
Was Gershwin really a classical composer? He certainly didn't know much about lighting. That's a terrible home video.
 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Household music-making was the strata from which chamber music emerged. Here is some more Mozart, in this case an opera aria from Die Zauberflote, arranged for cello and piano by no less than Beethoven himself.

The performers here are colleagues at Western University where I studied, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi cellist and Ronald Turini on the piano. My favourite recording of this work.

Here are some more movements from that classic 1980 set of Beethoven cello & piano sonatas with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Ronald Turini, colleagues from Western University.


 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
More from that classic set of Beethoven cello/piano works performed by two professors and colleagues at Western University, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Ronald Turini (not my professor).

Beethoven's unpublished set of variations on Mozart's "Magic Flute" theme of marital love.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is a "family" album. I heard my mother sing in "Belshazzar's Feast" conducted by Robert Shaw in 1964 at Western University. Following the rehearsals for "Belshazzar's Feast" Shaw had suggested to my mother that she pursue solo work, which she declined.
In 1970, I sang in "Chichester Psalms" with the Western music students choir while I was a music student at Western.

Here is Robert Shaw and Co. The tracks follow one another automatically.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is a "family" album. I heard my mother sing in "Belshazzar's Feast" conducted by Robert Shaw in 1964 at Western University. Following the rehearsals for "Belshazzar's Feast" Shaw had suggested to my mother that she pursue solo work, which she declined.
In 1970, I sang in "Chichester Psalms" with the Western music students choir while I was a music student at Western.

Here is Robert Shaw and Co. The tracks follow one another automatically.

Here is another seasonal family video, from our family band in Cornwall.

Several related family in this recent video, prepared just last month. Toby Lobb and Jeremy Brown among others.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
More from that classic set of Beethoven cello/piano works performed by two professors and colleagues at Western University, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Ronald Turini (not my professor).

Beethoven's unpublished set of variations on Mozart's "Magic Flute" theme of marital love.

Ronald Turini and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi recorded their Beethoven cello/piano set for CBS/Sony, but Turini had earlier recorded for RCA.

Here is Turini's debut album on RCA from the early 1960s. This LP was highly acclaimed by the music critics.

 
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