Just got this set brand new for $15! Can't wait to dig into it as I haven't heard much by him. Your review helped!

A friend of mine played one of the Reger sonatas for violin and piano for his "boards" at the end of a semester. Boards are where the faculty members of a department (in this case the string department) sit around a table eating bagged lunches, drinking coffee, and reading the newspaper while students come in one after another to play for 5 to 10 minutes to see whether they are going to get kicked out of school, which does happen, and especially after the freshman year. Anyway, he and the pianist meandered their way through about ten minutes of Reger, never once arriving at a clear cadence, and finally, the head of the department raised his hand and said "That will do." Whereupon Henry Meyer of the LaSalle Quartet stood up and said "Now you must play it again BACKWARDS!" The department head dryly noted that no one would be able to tell the difference.

I really feel it depends on whether I’m in a good day to get past the Symphonic Prologue. I love that closing oboe solo in the exposition, feels precisely like the second theme of the Mov I of the Karłowicz symphony. There’s a feeling of visiting a ruin many years after a devastation, to see wild grass growing on the debris in both of them. But the for the large swathes of chromatic sludge, I need a certain amount of patience and concentration.

I haven't picked this one up yet, but I've already got three massive Reger box sets (solo piano works by Becker, the Naxos organ set, and a giant set of chamber recordings made back in the 90s) that I've been chewing on for years, as well as the 'Maximum Reger' DVD box set that was made a few years ago. Some of us are die-hards for his sort of 'absolute music' and I'm bummed that we haven't yet seen a complete lieder box.

The Berlin Classics 7 cd Reger box has many very subtle interpretations. I tend to love it all.

I just laid hands to this box a couple months ago. Your description of Reger's orchestral prowess is insightful: occasional counterpoint dense enough to almost seem an aimless slog. Still, as imperfect as it is/as he was, I'm sincerely enjoying, especially the Böcklin poems, the single-movement requiem, and that orchestral prologue. As long as it is, it's weird to have named his sinfonietta in the diminutive, like a thousand-page novella. I've been deliberately collecting music inspired by Böcklin. Rachmaninoff, of course, but another I've been enjoying is Woyrsch's similar collection of tone poems. Huber is kinda interesting in having been inspired by Böcklin paintings while not writing anything inspired by the Isle of the Dead.

@hyperaticism

4 ай бұрын

Among the version of the Isle of the Dead, I found the Schulz-Beuthen one most dreadful, like on of his symphonies one the same disc. Weigl’s piano tone poem Toteninsel is a first class rendition of the subject

@eugenebraig413

4 ай бұрын

@@hyperaticism , I quite agree here. His seems the most superficial.

Dave..I know you like to review boxes...(I have some of the the Reger pieces of the variations of Bach and Mozart) - He is not my favorite ..but infesting - ). There is still available the mono Deutsche Gramophone Box -- which has some very fine recordings that are hard to get individually. (one of the pieces I wanted to get was Ancerl Shostakovich's Symphony 10 - which is in the box ). Cost is quite cheap... As always... I start my day every morning with your current reviews....

I am an organist and I have not yet played all of the "Urrrgh", but I intend to. Don't worry, I won't record it!

Very witty and amusing.

A word of caution: I purchased this set as a digital download on Amazon Music. The playlist is correct but one piece is repeated and another is omitted (the Finale of the Romantic Suite is a repeat of the first movement Notturno). The technicians at Amazon have been working on this problem for over a year without resolution from DG. I assume the CDs do not have this issue. Although these performances are good, the Segerstam versions on BIS are much finer. Reger’s An die Hoffnung is one of the greatest orchestral songs of all time, but the Abbado/Mattila on Sony has never been superceded. I am assuming, Dave, that you are aware that Reger was the teacher of both Rudolph Serkin and George Szell.

@DavesClassicalGuide

Жыл бұрын

Yes, I am aware, and I'm not sure why that matters. Thanks for the warning about the download. It will never be fixed. I spend months working on things like that with Apple Music and it has all been useless.

@junzeroni

Жыл бұрын

I was trying to 'go digital' with classical music for a time, but good lord are the existing services sub-standard. Amazon still forces people to download variable-bit-rate MP3s like it's 2010 or something. Presto Music is a step up (at least lets you choose between MP3 320 and FLAC, but there too I've run into issues where a MP3 download will just cut off mid-track or won't even be the right music to begin with. If both of those cases, Presto's customer service people basically blew me off with some stock reply like 'I dunno, it looks okay from our end. Why don't you just try downloading it again?!' The only reliable places where I pick up classical MP3s are direct from the websites of some labels like Toccata Classics.

@andrewfeinberg877

Жыл бұрын

@@junzeroni While I would never consider converting my extensive library to digital, I have found that iTunes sells certain rare releases at reasonable prices (used CDs can be outrageously priced). But iTunes has its problems; I have gotten messages that I am "not authorized" to hear music I have purchased. It offers a solution, acknowledging the authorization, but it won't play. It has to be deleted and then reloaded. What an annoyance!

@classicallpvault8251

Жыл бұрын

@@junzeroni Why not just download them using a p2p client like Soulseek? You paid for these mp3s so you have a legal right to own a copy so even if you're against music piracy it'd not be an issue, nor from a legal perspective (as you have the receipt)

The Reger violin concerto has to be the most indigestible work of the genre, a Brahms with neither the melody nor charm. It's just as interminable in its chamber version in that Linos Ensemble Capriccio box-set. I do like some of his variations sets, and had a chuckle when one music magazine referred to Reger's Hitler Variations. Was that a Freudian slip?

@classicallpvault8251

Жыл бұрын

That concerto is magnificient. I can understand why it's hard to digest though, perhaps one needs to have a streak of madness oneself to fully appreciate it. After all, Reger was a genius but he was also a raging drunk with a history of mental illness.

@hyperaticism

4 ай бұрын

I’m about to try this chamber version out of curiosity since I decide to revisit this VC. I think I’m in the progress of gradually digest it. But the most indigestible Reger orchestral work for me is still Mov I of the PC, which feels mostly like a deluxe version of a chromatic scale

picture me in Australia giggling like a maniac at about 10 minutes in

I just got that box, since I've long been interested in dipping a toe or three into Reger's music -- not because of anything GOOD I'd heard about it, but because Stravinsky absolutely hated the man and his music. Anything that inspires that much vitriol must surely have something going on. No one explodes in ad hominem fury over a mere mediocrity. And I find I quite like this stuff! Like Scriabin, like Marx, Reger was very much his own man beyond the cloak of Romanticism. I don't find any of it too long. Morton Feldman's 2nd string quartet is too long. This stuff works just fine at the length it's got.

I'll stick with the Böcklin Pictures and the Hiller Variations both of which I Järvi on Chandos and which I also recommend. The rest well let it rest in peace and perhaps oblivion !

@alwa6954

Жыл бұрын

Do try his chamber music. I think that is where his genius had its greatest expression. Everything he wrote for chamber forces is brilliant. He also wrote a lot of great music for single instrument but he was an absolute master of chamber music, one of the greatest ever.

@hyperaticism

4 ай бұрын

Try the Mozart Variations. The final Fugue is absolutely glorious

@jurgenschaarwachter1287

Ай бұрын

Järvi sadly has never understood Reger's textures - better listen to Segerstam or, for the Hiller Variations, Colin Davis. Or, perhaps, to Keilberth (the earlier recording the better).

Reger’s music is not nearly so bad as it sounds. As an organist, I love his maxnificent Choral Phantasies and Fugues.

@robertwalker2052

Жыл бұрын

Is "not so bad as it sounds" damning with faint praise, or would that be " better than it sounds"? Either Refer is all better than he is or worse than anyone cared to hope. Or something either like or completely unlike that.