Classical Music Forum banner

Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951)

144K views 1K replies 153 participants last post by  ThefirstTroubadour 
#1 ·
Such an intellectual composer - the only composer that frightens more or less all western society fifty years after his death.
 
#898 ·
Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Ursula Oppens; both excellent musicians.

Organism Font Terrestrial plant Line Natural material
 
#899 ·


This is a monumental performance. I take back all the flak I said about Pierre Boulez conducting Schoenberg a few pages back. Anyone who can deliver this is a master. Of course, the highlight of it all is the late Jessye Norman. Really gripping stuff. I implore everyone who reads this post to listen to this today in memory of Ms. Norman. If the link doesn't work, I'm talking about the Lied der Waldtaube with Pierre Boulez & the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
 
#900 ·
^^^
I have the box set. The only interpretation I don't like is the 5 Pieces for Orchestra. The rest is fine. The individual CDs with the art work and booklets are a lot nicer. I have a few.
 
#901 ·
The individual CD is the one I have, it also includes an excellent Pierrot Lunaire, and then Erwartung, which I have not heard yet. The Lied der Waldtaube was a welcome surprise. It's a beautiful work.

Does anyone know whether it was arranged for chamber orchestra by Schoenberg himself, and if so, when?
 
#911 ·
I thought about picking up that Rosen box. I'll get a few sets during Presto's box set sale at the end of the year. For anybody who likes Gurrelieder, I encourage you to listen to the Chailly recording I uploaded. This one is superb, imo.
 
#914 · (Edited)
I remember Zappa saying he didn't like some of those Boulez/Webern recordings because they didn't use a recording space with the proper room acoustics. Wish I could find the interview.

You're just kidding yourself thinking you can tell the difference between 20 bit and 24 bit. The difference can't be detected by human hearing. It's a way for record companies to sell you the same music again.

https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/
 
  • Like
Reactions: arpeggio
#915 · (Edited)
I just skimmed down to the summary:

"When people claim to hear differences between 16-bit, 20-bit, and 24-bit recordings, it is not the difference between the bit depths that they are hearing, but rather the difference in the quality of the digital mastering. The fact is that even most so-called 24-bit recordings are mastered with less than the 96dB dynamic range of a 16-bit recording (and wisely so)."

Says most of what one needs to know. The extra bits are for the remastering process - for example, multiply a 16-bit number by 2 and it's now a 17-bit number, do it again, and 18 bits are required to preserve precision, so after 4 times you've reached the 20-bit limit. A highly processed signal with no room for overflow can get clipped and that's not going to sound good.

To use 24 bits, say that 8 consecutive samples are windowed for processing. A filter adding up those 8 16-bit numbers outputs a 24-bit number. That's without multiplying any of those samples with coefficients. So going from 20 to 24 bits increases the window size from 4 to 8 samples, certainly a big deal to a sound engineer.

The final result always has to be renormalized down to 16 bits, typically requiring division (dropping the least significant bits until there are 16 remaining.)

The section on noise is interesting but SNR and resolution are not the same thing.
 
#917 · (Edited)
I found a good copy of the Led Zeppelin 4-CD box (1990) for $20, so I got it.

I noticed almost the moment I put it on (during Whole Lotta Love) that it sounded harsher and more biting than my newest remasters of the same songs (on the Jimmy Page remasters) which I got at Wal-Mart for $11.99 or something. Whatever it is they're doing, it sounds better.



But how will you know unless you hear it?
I have to go with what sounds better. If a remastered CD sounds better to me, I'm not going to settle for the old "crappy-sounding" mastering just because I'm not supposed to be able to hear any difference. If I hear it, I'm paying the $11.99, even if I have to go into Wal-Mart to get it cheap.
Unfortunately, this involves spending money in a gamble to find out, but as I said, CD prices are dirt-cheap these days. I guess I have faith in Jimmy Page's ability to remaster his own music to his satisfaction.
I'm a "believer" in many of the remasters out there.
For example, who does not have the new Beatle remasters? They sound much better than the old 1980s versions.
The Charles Rosen 4-CD box goes for $15.00 new on Amazon; that's less than $5 per disc. To me, that's worth the gamble.
 
#918 ·
Since you mentioned it, I like the old LZ CDs. I bought one recent remaster and it's bright and compressed. No more remasters for me. Classical music is another story. But in my experience Sony does a pretty good job. DG is hit and miss. Decca is usually pretty good with CD sound.
 
#919 ·
Comparing "Whole Lotta Love" from the 4-CD box set (1990) to the 2014 Deluxe 2-CD Jimmy Page remaster (2014), I noticed no compression; I noticed a smoothing-out of the harsh edge of the 1990, and also a very subtle resolution effect, where the instruments sound more detailed and seem to "exist in their own space" in the mix. Well worth $11.95.
 
#923 ·
I've joined the frenzy, and have also ordered the Gielen box. Thanks to star thrower for the link. My first order, and I got an additional 10% off.
 
#926 ·
Responding for myself, I have been enjoying the Sinopoli 2nd VS set, it's certainly not run-of-the-mill! Sinopoli puts a lot os passion into the music, so it can sound quite turbulent and quite exciting/excited. Gurrelieder is very good here, but I reckon his approach (a bit like Karajan, without the "lush perfection" (sic)) works best in the Berg pieces, and he gives the Webern pieces a different kind of liveliness than many others I have heard. Romantic Webern? Well ok, not necessarily the authentic approach! But it works fine, even if it underplays the revolutionary aspects of the music of all three composers. I didn't enjoy many of the other vocal works, beyond Gurrelieder. Odd balances, woolly words....

Gielen on the other hand makes every detail really clear, without sounding like he's involved in a public autopsy of the music. And yet this is properly human music, it's primarily concerned with human emotions and humanity in general, this is definitely not underplayed by him, something I'd occasionally suspect Boulez of trying to do....
 
#930 ·
I have Zemlinsky's non symphonic orchestral works on a nice EMI 3-fer set conducted by James Conlon. Good stuff! Later I bought his Symphony CD but didn't like it as much.
 
#931 · (Edited)
I have to be honest and say I have struggled to get much out of Zemlinsky so far, and have not really persevered either. Mein Schlecht, alas. I felt conned when I was told the Lyric Symphony was "another Lied von der Erde", and it frankly isn't.

I have enjoyed some composers who might be considered similar to AZ, like Diepenbrock, Schmidt and Schreker, perhaps I ought to have another go, and I have several discs from James Conlon, rate him pretty highly, so he may be a good way in? Any pieces other than the Lyric you'd say you've particularly liked, the two other Symphonies aside?
 
#933 ·
The Lyric Symphony wasn't one of the pieces I really liked. I liked the first disc in that set starting with the Mermaid. I know it's available separately on a single EMI disc.

For my money another Viennese composer Ernst Krenek is more modern and interesting that Zemlinsky. JPC has a number of his discs on sale. The chamber orchestra disc on the Toccata label is great, and they are selling it cheap. His string quartets on Capriccio by the Petersen Quartet are also highly recommended.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CnC Bartok
#937 ·
Somebody mention Ernst Toch, and I like him too. I have the symphonies on CPO. And I discovered another CPO disc with an interesting vocal work, Die Chinesische Flöte. I've been waiting for CPO to box his out of print string quartet CDs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CnC Bartok
#938 ·
@Star, the Sinopoli set is good. Very lush, yet detail-oriented performances. The Gurrelieder is amazing but I haven't heard the whole thing. And I really enjoy the Webern disc. His might be the definitive Im Sommerwind and the later, more "Webernian" pieces are great too. I really like his recording of the Symphony op.21 and the Variations op.30. I haven't listened to much of the Berg yet.
 
#939 · (Edited)
I've got Sinopoli's Webern as a single disc, and I agree; it's one of my most valued recordings of Webern.



Seeing as the 8-CD box is only $14.95, I'll have to get it.​





 
#944 ·
I'm listening to the Gielen box, Edition 8, which arrived yesterday. Now, it's Pelleas und Mellisande (1902-1903). The sound is very good, the orchestra is very good, and Gielen obviously is devoted to this music.
 
  • Like
Reactions: starthrower
Top