The Essential Classics

8/11/2019 The Essential Classics

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The Essential Classics

The raison d'tre of this compilation is to include the

works I like best and are compellingly listenable. I dontlike piano, for example, so you will not find Chopin,

Debussy, Liszt, Satie; I also dont like German lieder or

German opera, so no Schubert or Wagner. The

compositions fit no discernible oeuvreor epoch, though,

if pressed, I would probably say my favourite period is

the Baroque. In any case, I like early music performed

on period instruments best. And Italian opera...


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Some of this music belongs to our family history: Your

grandfather, Robert John Hinke, was president of our

local orchestra, the Nutley Symphony, for several years.Your grandmother, Carola Maynard Loos, sang Bachs

Christmas Oratorio from the stage at Carnegie Hall;

Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem was played at her

funeral.

My abiding love of Bach, The Unparalleled Master, is

largely due to the influence of my lifelong friends,George and Vesta Putnam. Put was a true audiophile

and was always tinkering with his impressive stereo

systemthis was before most people even knew about

stereo! Put also had an amazing collection of records;

his family played Bach for him as he was dying. My

other dearest friends, Max and Maxine Hoffer, had a

Steinway grand piano in their living room and Maxplayed the most beautiful flute.

There was never enough money for Mama to take piano

lessons in Peterborough. When we were first together

and living in Rochdale College, she carried a load of

hash to Montral on the train to buy an Artley silver flute.

A good part of our inspiration came from (well, thehash!) but also from hearing the famous Dutch flautist,

Frans Brggen. You attended a performance of Handels

Messiahat Massey Hall with us when you were just 17

days old; needless to say, you was the star of the show.

Later, Mama made sure both you and Simon had piano

lessons. I grew up with a German upright which my

maternal grandmother, Amy Maynard Loos, a Lutheran


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preachers wife, played acceptably well. I cannot

remember my mother playing, though she must have

had lessons.

As I mentioned above, I dont particularly enjoy piano

music, though that is not a hard and fast rule; I simply

much prefer the delicacy of the harpsichord. One of my

earliest musical memories is being taken by my parents

to Carnegie Hall to hear the foremost modern interpreter

of Bachs original vision, the Polish harpsichordist,

Wanda Landowska. (She is now considered very old-fashioned.) I was perhaps three years old. Landowska

was a tiny, ancient figure in a floor-length black gown;

she glided from the wings to her instrument as if she

were on wheels! One of the first books I bought myself

when I was a teenager was her epic Landowska on

Bach. Ive never learned to play an instrument or read

music so this was like having a book in a foreignlanguage and I got precisely nothing from reading it.

Another of my earliest musical memories was being

taken to the old Metropolitan Opera house to see Aida

when I was four; the director came on stage to

announce a delaythe camels were stuck in traffic

coming from the Bronx Zoo!


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Full house at the old Met

Murals by Marc Chagall at the new house, 1966. Left is

The Triumph of Music, right The Sources of Music. Each


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measures approximately nine by 11 metres.

Swarovski crystal chandeliers, called Starburst or

Sputnik, at the new Met. Designed by Hans Harald

Rath, they were gifts of the Austrian government.

When I was 14, I camped out on the sidewalk on

Broadway with a few other diehards to hear the final

performances in the old house, a gilt jewel-box with the

best acoustics I have heard in any hall. During the

farewell gala performance, roses rained down on the

stage for Renata Tebaldi who is, of course, to be heardin this collection. I was the youngest person involved in

the movement to save the old house from demolition. I

climbed the crane the night before and locked myself to

the toprescued by firemen and cut loose, in both

senses, by police! Although I loved the old place, I

availed myself often of two-dollar standing room (behind

the orchestra seats, with a brass bar on which to restyour butt) at the new house at Lincoln Center. It doesnt


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have the charm of the old Met but the Chagall murals

are so beautiful.

I have tried to give a brief glimpse of my favourite artistsin the Xtras section. In many cases, I was not able to

find a musician I especially liked or a particular album or

piece of music. Music is a journey of exploration and

discovery and you will find others who speak to you. I

have also included a few virtuoso musicians playing not-

classical music, including the composers for films

Bernard Herrmann and Philip Glass. And I have grownpartial to the range of the versatile fiddle as our house is

often filled with its many styles of music.

I hope this music will give you as much pleasure and

satisfaction as it has me, over a lifetime of listening. I am

including video of a small Polish orchestra playing

Vivaldis The Four Seasons directed by Nigel Kennedyoutdoors at le Citadelle in France; it is the best concert

performance on video I have ever seen.


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Keith Emerson (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) on the Moog

Synthesizer

I hope I have imparted in you the deepest, abiding love

of music, in your blood and in your genes. It is the best

religion I know of and sustains me when I have grown

too old and lazy to practice yoga. Perhaps this quote

from a musician in the New York Philharmonic says it

best: We worshipped Toscanini but we love Lenny.

I love you

as high as the sky

and as wide as the earth,

your

Papa

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO


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A note on file formats. Many of these CDs are MP3s at

the highest bit rate I could find (320kbps is CD quality);

VBR stands for variable bit rate which I think gives therichest sound quality. However, others are in lossless

formats such as FLAC or OGG or APE. Whether these

produce sound of better quality, of course, depends

entirely upon the quality of the equipment on which they

are played. If you want to get serious about this, you can

connect your computer to a high-fidelity amplifier, even

an old one, and use high-quality speakers for playback.None of this is expensive and was a fun and satisfying

project for the old man. The video formats MP4 and

MKV should be playable on your home DVD player. I

highly suggest you listen to all formats on computer

using VLC.

^^^^^

Bach (1685-1750) - The Master: All compositions

Beethoven (1770-1827) - The Symphonies, Concertos &

Sonatas

Berlioz (1903-1869) - Symphonie Fantastique, le Nuitsdete

Bernstein (1918-1990) - Mass, Peter Pan, West Side

Story, Young Peoples Concerts (video)

Bottesini (1821-1889) - All works


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Brahms (1833-1897) - Ein Deutsches Requiem,

Symphonies, Triple Concerto

Britten (1913-1976) - American Overture, SaintNicholas, The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra

(narrated by Dame Edna Everage)

Copland (1900-1990) - Appalachian Spring

Gershwin (1898-1937) - Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in

Blue

Glass (1937- ) - les Animaux amoureux, la Belle et la

bte, Passages (with Ravi Shankar), Songs for a Trilogy,

The Ultimate Philip Glass

Handel (1685-1759) - Cantatas and Arias, Wind

Sonatas, Flute Sonatas, Messiah, Violin Sonatas, Water

Music

Haydn (1732-1809) - Complete Masses, The Creation,

Stabat Mater, String Quartets, Complete Symphonies

Herrmann (1911-1975) - The Film Scores

Ives (1874-1954) - Orchestral music

Mendelssohn (1809-1847) - Complete chamber music

Mozart (1756-1791) - All compositions

Mussorgsky (1839-1881) - Pictures at an Exhibition


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Pachelbel (1653-1706) - Canon

Paganini (1882-1840) - Complete works

Poulenc (1899-1963) - The Story of Babar, the Little

Elephant (narrated by Barry Humphries)

Prokofiev (1891-1953) - Cinderella, Peter and the Wolf

(Narrated by Dame Edna Everage)

Puccini (1858-1924) - Essential operas, Requiem

Ravel (1875-1937) - Bolro, ma Mre de la oye (Mother

Goose), Shhrazade

Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) - Shhrazade

Saint-Sans (1835-1921) - le Carnaval des animaux

(The Carnival of the Animals), Danse macabre, Oratorio

de Nel

Strauss (1804-1849) - Also Sprach Zarathustra

Stravinsky (1882-1971) - The Firebird, le Sacre du

printemps (The Rite of Spring), The Nightingale

Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) - The Sleeping Beauty, Swan

Lake, The Nutcracker, Symphonie Pathtique

Verdi (1813-1901) - Complete operas, Missa de

Requiem


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Vivaldi (1678-1741) - The Four Seasons, Recorder

Concertos, Stabat Mater, Magnificat

Weill (1900-1950) - Die Dreigroschenopera (The

Threepenny Opera)

XTRAS - Vocal; Bassoon, Cello, Guitar, Harpsichord,

Oboe, Organ, Viola, Violin; Requiem Masses-Allegri,

Berlioz, Biber, Brahms, Campra, Cherubini, Dvorak,

Faur, Gouvy, Mozart, Ockegheim, Penderecki, Puccini,Rutter, Verdi; Stabat Mater-Dvorak, Gouvy, Jenkins,

Palestrina, Pergolesi, Scarlatti, Vivaldi; Leonard

Bernsteins Young Peoples Concertsseries (video).

Leroy Neiman, The Metropolitan Opera, 1978

The Essential Classics

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