Hi Fergus, you are not a party pooper at all, like you say one can only go on what one has heard and has in one's collection. I am glad that you have shared your thoughts with us, it would be a boring oul place if we all agreed with each other all the time.fergus wrote:Jose Echenique wrote:
While many conductors just decided to ignore the period instruments movement, dear Claudio rethought the whole thing and concluded, that after all, yes, they are right.
He has recorded Mozart symphonies with the LSO and the Berlin Philharmonic, big band, traditional readings, here he reformulated everything, relearned everything, and even if his readings lack the aplomb of let´s say a Frans Brüggen, one can only admire a glorious conductor who in his 70´s still was eager to learn and understand. Bravo Claudio!!!!
What you say Pepe is very interesting because it perhaps explains something for me. I did not want to be a party pooper and spoil the Abbado adoration but my experiences with him have been somewhat different, somewhat mixed. I can only go by what I personally have heard from the performances of works that are very important to me in my own collection.
As is obvious my collection consists mainly of Abbado's orchestral recordings and I think that the following collections are up there with the best of them, paticularly when one considers Abbado's:Abbado’s Mahler 10 CD cycle is undoubtedly the best overall cycle that I have heard and some individual performances in that set are among the best that I have heard. It is an indispensible set in my collection; no question about that.
Interestingly, as you mentioned Tchaikovsky, I was not convinced by Abbado’s Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6. This is a work that I have been listening to since I was in my teens and I have over a dozen versions of it.
1. Mahler recordings with the BPO, CSO and LFO (we are agreed on that one)
2. the Menddelssohn cycle with the LSO
3. the Haydn London Symphonies with the ECO
4. the Stravinsky recordings with the LSO and
5. the Mozart recordings with the BPO
Over the past few weeks I have listened to his Beethoven cycle with the BPO and it is very good indeed and I have just recently started listening to his Schubert cycle with the ECO and I really like what I've heard thus far.
I have his 6 Tchaikovsky Symphonies and am inclined to listen to the Second or Third when I choose to listen to Tchakovsky which is not very often to be honest.
Abbado has a a vast range of recordings so when one considers his baroque, classical, romantic, modern and opera output it is reasonable to expect that not all are great nor will they appeal to everyone either. I am not familiar with his Bach recordings and I can well imagine that they would not be to your liking. As for opera: I have the Rossini and Verdi cycles on order but I am a poor judge of these things I'm afraid.Neither was I convinced by his Mozart Requiem (I have ten versions) and I actually dislike his Die Zauberflote (of which I own a mere six versions).
I think that I would be known for my liking of JS Bach and I have over twenty versions of the Brandenburg Concertos and I have to be honest and say that the Abbado is the worst of the bunch; it is appallingly poor.
So, as a result of these less than convincing versions of some of my personal favourite works I stopped buying performances by this undoubtedly eminent conductor. He was not a conductor that I would actively seek out when I was building my collection. But perhaps you have explained why for me in your post above but as a rule Abbado just never did it for me and perhaps I was just unlucky to choose some of his dud performances (and every conductor has these); they just happen to be those performances of works that mean a lot to me personally. Perhaps, as you say, his best work lies in his opera performances and I may try one or two of those in the future.
