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

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
The most distinguished violinist at Western University where I studied music was Steven Staryk, concertmaster of several famous orchestras. Here he is with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1962 with Bernhard Haitink conducting the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1.

Staryk's background was Ukrainian Canadian and he was at home with Russian violin concertos. Many Ukrainian farmers had migrated to Manitoba and Saskatchewan to create large wheat farms on the Canadian prairies.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here are two colleagues at Western University whom I knew, Tsutsumi the cellist, whom I knew from weekly masterclasses, and Ronald Turini the pianist (whom I met only once).

The best set of Beethoven cello/piano sonatas in my view.

Here is the Beethoven Op. 102 No. 2.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is the second Beethoven cello sonata, the only one in a minor key, although the final movement is in a major key.

This is very emotional, operatic-scale music from Beethoven, among his finest early music. These two interpreters, Tsutsumi and Turini give a full expressive range of treatment, the music comes fully alive in these recordings.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
In addition to his cello concerto, Dvorak included important cello parts into his chamber music.

Here is Tsutsumi giving the cello role a dominant performance in Dvorak's Dumky Trio.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
One of Dvorak's most successful students at the Prague Conservatory was the gifted pianist/composer Rudolf Friml. Friml was a fine improviser and pianist.

Friml performed the Grieg Piano Concerto in 1902 at Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter Damrosch..

Friml also composed two piano concertos of his own, but all that remains is the orchestral parts, Friml used his improvisatory gifts to perform the solo parts himself as the inspiration moved him.

Here is an improv by Friml himself on an aria from his famed operetta "Indian Love Call" followed by a live performance on television from 1957.


 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Friml's piano music is still well regarded and performed to this day. Here is a recent recording of various Friml concert piano works.
One of my grandmothers would buy some of these Friml works and play them.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Friml's greatest operetta was composed in 1924 and is set to a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II.

It depicts the activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but in this live performance in the Czech Republic the tenor has forgotten his Mountie uniform and sings in Czech.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Friml composed the definitive Mountie marching song and Nelson Eddy who sang it on film was honoured by being awarded a Mountie membership.


"Far over the snow what are those voices?
(Over the snow)
They sing as they go.
What do those voices (call)

Look out for the Mounties
(Here come the Mounties)
We come somebody hide, somebody better hide!

On thru' the hail
Like a pack of angry wolves on the trail,
(We are after you) dead or alive
We are out to get you dead or alive
(And we'll get you soon.)

If you're the one
Better run, better run away
Son you are done
Throw your gun, throw your gun away
Here come the Mounties to get the man they're after now."
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here are the Western University colleagues Tsutsumi and Turini with their 1980 recording of the most highly regarded of Beethoven's cello/piano sonatas.

This masterwork is here given what I regard as the finest ever performance which reveals all of the drama and interior meditative qualities which Beethoven intended. This set should be required listening for every aspiring chamber musician.

This was the final recording made of the set, and Turini has said that he was particularly satisfied with the recording of Op.69 here.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
One of Tsutsumi's fellow music students at Toho Gakuen music school in Tokyo has just passed on.

Seiji Ozawa was one of the prominent voices in orchestral direction.
I heard him conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in London, Ontario at Western University in 1969 in this work. Exciting performance, more powerful than his later versions.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Seiji Ozawa was music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for several decades, longer than any other music director of that orchestra.

Here is a tribute to Ozawa this week in Boston.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is Ozawa's first television appearance in North America from 1962. Ozawa studied with both Bernstein and Karajan before taking the directorship at Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Exploring the outer bounds of the Beethoven output, such as the five cello sonatas linked above with Tsutsumi and Turini, a team which which lasted from 1975 to 2003 (the date of their national broadcast of the Borodin and Shostakovich sonatas), uncovers many new finds.

Here is the world premiere recording of Beethoven's unfinished Piano Concert No. 6 (yes, that's right, (yes, that's right, No. 6!) !!!

Beethoven composed this work in 1814/15 during the final days of the Napoleonic period. About six years after the Emperor Concerto. He worked hard on it for several months, and largely completed the first movement. Impressive music, Beethoven was incapable of composing bad music. The composition was interrupted by other work and he never got around to completing it. It was about this time that Beethoven also composed the cadenza to the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
There have also been recent reconstructions of lost works by Bach, in particular of his lost oboe concerti. The existing keyboard and violin concerti attributed to Bach contain many figurations which suggest an origin as oboe concerti.

Here is one example, which is very convincing in terms of an original supposed oboe concerto origin.
It is wonderful how new music by Bach and Beethoven continues to appear from lost or fragmentary sources.

 

AgassiSuperSlam11

Hall of Fame
Exploring the outer bounds of the Beethoven output, such as the five cello sonatas linked above with Tsutsumi and Turini, a team which which lasted from 1975 to 2003 (the date of their national broadcast of the Borodin and Shostakovich sonatas), uncovers many new finds.

Here is the world premiere recording of Beethoven's unfinished Piano Concert No. 6 (yes, that's right, (yes, that's right, No. 6!) !!!

Beethoven composed this work in 1814/15 during the final days of the Napoleonic period. About six years after the Emperor Concerto. He worked hard on it for several months, and largely completed the first movement. Impressive music, Beethoven was incapable of composing bad music. The composition was interrupted by other work and he never got around to completing it. It was about this time that Beethoven also composed the cadenza to the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2.

I had a portion of his sixth Piano Concerto and his 10th Symphony both unfinished for years. I wonder if there are sufficient sketches to complete the 10th? I purchased the Mahler complete cycle performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and also a full version of his 10th conducted by Simon Rattle. Hopefully, some older unfinished compositions can also meet the same fate. I believe Mozart's wife found Zaide years after his death and she lived a long life.

As an aside, gradually going through Handel's operas and oratorios first time in years and understand why LVB thought of him highly.
 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Beethoven's teacher, Haydn, is surely an underrated giant, Haydn's settings of the Mass provided a model for Beethoven to follow.

Here is a recording of the Haydn "Paukenmesse" conducted by Richard Hickox, who founded the St. Endellion Easter Festival at our parish church near Port Isaac in Cornwall. Hickox' father was a Vicar in the Anglican church. Hickox passed on in 2008 and was laid to rest in the St. Endellion church yard cemetery, the church of which is the location for the annual festivals. I commissioned and dedicated a gravestone for my own great grandfather just a few short months later in the same cemetery. I did not realize that Hickox had been buried there.

Hickox' son is a noted conductor and he will conduct in April this year at the St. Endellion Easter Festival which his father founded in 1974.

The soprano soloist here is Nancy Argenta, a former music student at Western University in London, Ontario. I studied music there shortly before she arrived.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Hickox was a great interpreter of sacred choral works, here is the Schubert setting of the Mass from the composer's last year of life.

The tenor soloist here, Mark Padmore, is currently the director of the St. Endellion festivals together with his son.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is a real find, the 1960 Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition performances live by Ronald Turini, including both the Schumann Piano Sonata No. 2 and the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Belgian National Orchestra. These performances gave Turini second place in the competition, and one of the jurors, Emil Gilels, pronounced Turini to be "wonderful".

Later in 1962 Turini performed the Liszt concerto in Moscow with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. On that occasion Gilels acclaimed Turiini as "a great artist". The same tour continued to Paris where Le Figaro described Turini's Liszt concerto performance as "literally dazzling, of exceptional taste, finesse, and brilliance."

Click on the AUDIO section for these performances.
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Another Horowitz student was Byron Janis, who passed on recently.

Janis and I had a mutual friend, a psychology professor at Western who had known Janis and his wife, Maria Cooper (daughter of Gary Cooper, the actor) in the 1960s in California.

Janis made a fine recording of the Rachmaninoff No 2.

Click on "Watch on Youtube".

 
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.


Thanks. Just started listening and the audio engineers did a excellent job.

It'll be tough to surpass Uchida however, who IMHO represents the Everest of the piano sonata cycle.

Back to the topic at hand - Wolfgang passed away at the tender young age of only 35y.o. Had he lived another 20-30 yrs or so to Bach or Beethoven's age (65 and 57), he would have blown both of them away! Can you imagine another 30 yrs of Mozart output? :oops: And how his style and compositions would have developed and matured at a later age? :unsure: Its tough to even fathom how he could become even greater, but I think he would have done it. And in tennis parlance he won about the same number of slams, Masters, and weeks at #1 in half the time as the other Big 3. Let there be no doubt: Mozart = GOAT

/thread
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Thanks. Just started listening and the audio engineers did a excellent job.

It'll be tough to surpass Uchida however, who IMHO represents the Everest of the piano sonata cycle.

Back to the topic at hand - Wolfgang passed away at the tender young age of only 35y.o. Had he lived another 20-30 yrs or so to Bach or Beethoven's age (65 and 57), he would have blown both of them away! Can you imagine another 30 yrs of Mozart output? :oops: And how his style and compositions would have developed and matured at a later age? :unsure: Its tough to even fathom how he could become even greater, but I think he would have done it. And in tennis parlance he won about the same number of slams, Masters, and weeks at #1 in half the time as the other Big 3. Let there be no doubt: Mozart = GOAT

/thread
I once had this conversation with Philip Downs, a longtime friend and my music history professor and the author of "Classical Music". He told me in a private conversation that he regarded Beethoven and Mozart as the two greatest composers. He said that Beethoven was the greater intellectually and architecturally in constructing symphonic forms, but that Mozart was the greatest ever in translating the content of words into a musical equivalent. Downs himself considered Mozart to be his favourite composer, although Downs' most famous work was related to Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony.

 
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I once had this conversation with Philip Downs, a longtime friend and my music history professor and the author of "Classical Music". He told me in a private conversation that he regarded Beethoven and Mozart as the two greatest composers. He said that Beethoven was the greater intellectually and architecturally in constructing symphonic forms, but that Mozart was the greatest ever in translating the content of words into a musical equivalent. Downs himself considered Mozart to be his favourite composer, although Downs' most famous work was related to Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony.


Well put!

That book is over 700 pages. Whoa.
 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
This upcoming season for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra will see six prominent Mozart pianists in the March-June spring of 2025, Emmanuel Ax, Angela Hewitt, Yuja Wang, Yeol Eum Son, Beatrice Rana and Víkingur Ólafsson.

Those are six very prominent pianists, all of whom are worth hearing.


Yeol Eum Son will appear on May 16 with the National Arts Centre Orchestra as part of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra regular season in Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.

Son will play the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22, which should be a highlight of the musical year.

My wife and I will try to get tickets for this performance.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
New generations of young performers come to the fore and perform the great Mozart concerti, for example this 20-year old French hornist, who is now the new Principal Horn of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

She has the smooth melodic style needed for Mozart, which was also a feature of the great Dennis Brain in the 1950s.

 

vokazu

Legend
Determining the "greatest" classical music composer is subjective and often depends on personal preferences and criteria. Some of the most renowned composers include Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and many others. Each composer has made significant contributions to classical music in their own unique way, making it challenging to label one as the absolute greatest.
 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Sir Andrew Davis passed on recently, another former TSO music director, who conducted every year with the orchestra for 50 seasons without a break.
I first heard him conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1978, when I was living in Toronto, he conducted the Bruckner Eighth, and it was very impressive.
Last heard him conduct in 2020, the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto with Cho as soloist, and the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. Very strong performances, vigorous, stirring.
Here he is with the TSO in the Beethoven Third Piano Concerto in 1987, with Anton Kuerti as soloist.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here are the Western University colleagues Tsutsumi and Turini with their 1980 recording of the most highly regarded of Beethoven's cello/piano sonatas.

This masterwork is here given what I regard as the finest ever performance which reveals all of the drama and interior meditative qualities which Beethoven intended. This set should be required listening for every aspiring chamber musician.

This was the final recording made of the set, and Turini has said that he was particularly satisfied with the recording of Op.69 here.
It appears that my personal opinion about the supremacy of this performance of the Beethoven Op. 69 Cello/Piano Sonata with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Ronald Turini is shared by another music

evaluator, the eminent music reviewer Tully Potter.

Who is Tully Potter? "Tully Potter was born in Edinburgh in 1942 and grew up in South Africa before returning to the UK, where he became one of the country’s, and eventually the world’s, most influential record critics and historians. He edited Classic Record Collector for 11 years and is currently opera critic for The Daily Mail. His magnum opus, a two-volume biography of the German violinist and composer Adolf Busch, published in 2010, is set for rerelease this fall. "


Potter described the Op. 69 performance in the Tsutsumi/Turini collection as follows in a 2019 review:

"My all-time choice so far is Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Ronald Turini in their outstanding Sony set..."

I could not agree more.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is an in-house recording from 1993 of two faculty members at the Western University Faculty of Music, probably related to a faculty recital.

Clarinetist Jerome Summers and pianist Ronald Turini. Guarantee of outstanding results.

Brahms Clarinet and piano sonata No. 1.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 just two days ago with Son debuting with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa.

Major work and presentation.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
I tried to get tickets to hear this performer with this same concerto and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1970...no luck.

But here he is in January 1966 with the same concerto and the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein in a spirited account.

Rudolf Serkin was one of the greats, true Viennese style.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
My wife and I now have tickets to hear this pianist perform the Ravel G Major concerto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa on May 14 next season in Ottawa, and also tickets to the performance of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 two days later in Toronto at Roy Thomson Hall with the same orchestra.

Great season coming up.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is a classic from the past, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi in 1981 performing the Dvorak Cello Concerto. Tsutsumi would record this work a few years later with the Czech Philharmonic in a classic recording.

Click on "Watch on Youtube" to redirect.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Having just returned from a one-month trip to South Korea, Japan, and California, it has become clear to me that the world of performing music has shifted to the great Eastern nations.

Last week in Japan, I encountered a string quintet performing a free open concert at lunch time, a performance of the Bruckner String Quintet, and I discussed with the young cellist afterwards his background. His name is Ryosuke Moriyama, and he is a former masterclass student of Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, just as I was in the early 1970s (albeit on the piano). Moriyama currently plays in the cello section of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.

Here is the Tokyo Metropolitan SO from 2017 with Alan Gilbert conducting Beethoven's Egmont Overture, a true political spectacle. Moriyama is not present here.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
In our recent trip to South Korea and Japan, my wife and I toured Tokyo by subway and foot, stopping at Suntory Hall, the main concert hall in the city, where we were lucky to buy tickets at the last minute for a performance by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra conducted by the music director of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Maxim Emelyanychev.

The President of Suntory Hall is Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, the great cellist and former professor at Western U where I had studied, but we had not arranged to meet him on this trip, so I just chatted with the ticket seller about the fact that I had studied with him many years earlier. When we returned to Canada, my piano professor pointed out to us that Tsutsumi is the chief executive of Suntory Hall.

When my piano professor travelled to Japan in 2017 to deliver a lecture at the major music school in Tokyo, Tsutsumi and his wife met her at the airport, much to her surprise. Tsutsumi's wife later showed her around the major art galleries in Tokyo, which my wife and I also saw on this trip.

Emelyanychev chose the Schubert Ninth Symphony as his major work, and it went superbly on this occasion.

The movements follow one another without a break.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is the young cellist my wife and I met at the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony lunch time concert, on the second cello from the left, although he no longer wears glasses while performing today.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is Tsutsumi performing at Suntory Hall in Tokyo with his longtime trio partners in 2007.
The following year I drove my Jaguar with my wife and also my piano professor from London to Toronto to hear Tsutsumi give a recital with a piano accompanist. He remembered who I was and we took some photos with my wife and myself and Tsutsumi.

 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Tsutsumi is still very active as a performer, as indicated by this recent concert.

Suntory Hall Chamber Music Garden

Suntory Hall Chamber Music Garden Opening Concert 2024
Produced by Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi

Date/TimeSaturday, June 1 2024 | 14:00 (Doors open 13:30)VenueBlue Rose (Small Hall)
Book Now

Performers
Piano: Michie Koyama
Cello: Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi
Programme: Beethoven:
Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major, Op. 5, No. 1
Cello Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 5, No. 2
Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major, Op. 69
Variations on a Theme from “Judas Maccabaeus” in G Major, WoO 45
Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” from Mozart's “Die Zauberflöte” in E-flat Major, WoO 46
 
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Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Tsutsumi was awarded the Order of Culture last week by the Japanese government.


In his acceptance, Tsutsumi stated,

"I believe that musical art is the common property of mankind and can serve as the foundation for building peace in the world."
 
Attended Balanchine's The Nutcracker today. Always amazed by how 'modern' Tchaikovsky sounds. Could be as a result of the music being featured in so many contemporary pieces of media and we're not as far removed from him as we are from, say, Bach, but I still appreciate how I'm never taken out of the moment by the music resolving in a way that sounds antiquated.
 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is an authentic performance of the Bach Christmas Oratorio recently, the performers attempting to give a period style presentation.

 

Dan Lobb

G.O.A.T.
Here is a priceless historical performance of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis from the New York Philharmonic conducted by Toscanini in 1935, with famous soloists in the vocal roles, Elisabeth Rethberg, Marion Telva, Giovanni Martinelli, Ezio Pinza.

The greatness and solemnity of this performance transcends the limitations of the recording.

 
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