Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1830s

Mainly opera and piano with a few notable stragglers.

At first glance, it's Schumann's Fantasie for me.

Symphonie Fantastique, innit

Sent music hurtling down a new path. Unacknowledged origin of so much, and still a freakish, hallucinatory experience to this day. Like Goya in musical form.

It doesn't exactly bespeak a Romantic conception of the Symphonie fantastique, but I love Boulez's second recording with the Cleveland Orchestra for its proto-Debussyan commitment to colouring. Otherwise Charles Munch is unimpeachable imho.

As a side note, it's not so much a Fantastic Symphony (although it is that too) as it is a Fantastical or Fantasy Symphony.

This is probably the first and only easy vote for me :)

It is to Berlioz' credit that the SF can bre interpreted in a number of different ways, forward and backward. It is after all a synthesis of Gluck and out-of-context late Beethoven. Some of the rest of it is Berlioz' childhood folk music experience creeping in too, like the 3rd movement. Guy was a guitarist, before he was a composer or knew anything about the orchestra, so I think that explains both some of the weird coagulated textures, and also the shifting time signatures/extended and unexpected dynamics. How he managed to translate what was in his head, the fragments of Beethoven and Gluck, and his childhood memories of childhood listening in the deep south, into this bizarre and very academically wrong orchestral melange is one of the great mysteries/miracles of 19c music. You can tell why ppl were so baffled and personally insulted, and why they thought he couldn't orchestrate or communicate anything coherent.

Ugh sorry typing at work so several repetitions there, hope its readable

Which recording would one find as a noob?

Listen to the first couple of minutes of the Boulez/Cleveland and the Munch/Boston, respectively, then go with whichever one agrees with your ears.

The 1830s: the 1975 of classical/romantic musick. Where is our Johnny Rotten? I guess we’ll see some Liszt next time.

C'mon, early Berlioz and Schumann were both arch-revolutionaries each in his own way.

Another Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5jjyxHyyEYBNeXGmcGLTjy
(Stuff after Berlioz is not represented there at all yet, but I must sleep. :) Feel free to edit anything at all, Spotify users!)

Thanks, Nag! And gute Nacht!

I haven't heard hardly any of this (I've heard the Berlioz but it never really grabbed me) - any thoughts/recommendations on these? Good places to dive in?

Some favourites (all solo piano):

Pollini for the Chopin Etudes and Preludes
Engerer for the Chopin Nocturnes
Argerich for Schumann's Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana
Andsnes for the Fantasie

The three Onslow quartets were recorded by the superlative Quatuor Diotima.

I'm not much of an opera buff, though, so I'm afraid I can't really help you there.

no worries i'm not big on opera either

gut answer is chopin preludes but will revisit some other stuff

Apologies for the staircase response, glumdalclitch, but that was a quality post, re: Berlioz. I had no idea that he'd started out as a guitarist.

just saw the ny phil perform fantastique so it's fresh in my mind, but i probably would've went for it regardless.

runner-up is a tie between like 5 chopin compositions, though i'm really just waiting til the next poll so i can vote for Heroic

La Juive, Acte IV: "Rachel, quand du Seigneur"

Proust connection! I should listen to that some time.

^^ things I learn from wikipedia today, too :)

I voted Chopin's Preludes. So many breathtaking moments in the collection. My favorite recordings are by Argerich and Claudio Arrau (because I heard his first). I also love many of Chopin's etudes and waltzes, but he tends to lose me when the longer pieces kick in with the schmaltz. Gets a little too predicable.

Conspicuously absent: Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony, "Italian". I also love Cherubini's string quartets. I haven't heard his quintet. I need to check out Onslow.

How the hell did I forget the Italian Symphony? Mea culpa.

My mind spontaneously went to Pollini when thinking about Chopin's Preludes but I actually prefer Argerich's take, now that you mention it.

Easy to miss the Italian Symphony as an 1830s work, because for some reason it was numbered after the 3rd Symphony from 1840-something, and its opus number is also way out of sequence.

Chopin Preludes vs Symphonie Fantastique - geez.

25 Progressive Studies over Fantaisie Élégiaque?

I haven't heard that one! Clearly I should've consulted you before coming up with a list.

I can not be expected to pick between Chopin's 12 etudes (Op. 10) and Chopin's 24 preludes (Op. 28). It's a cruel choices indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYLI3R7jOpU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGqaeUeTzj0

Ha, sorry, pom, didn't mean to slight your lists, which are staggeringly exhaustive.

No worries. I, for one, welcome a bit of quibbling – Michael B & Oor Neechy's series of polls featured their fair share of entertaining dissent.

I would never vote for it over Fantastique, but Donizettis The Love Elixir is one of the stronger things not nominated. I mean, it's kinda crap, through and through, but it's one of the few operas I've been in the chorus to, and it's a whole lot of fun singing it. And there's this one gem of a tenor aria towards the end. Isn't there always?

Fwiw as the pool of viable composers expands, I'll be forced to make increasingly more difficult (and shamelessly subjective) choices, so I expect a deluge of hate webmail over the next couple of months.

No hate :) Only love. Elixirs.

Sor's op. 60 (also titled "Introduction à l'étude de la guitare") is, as it sounds, a collection of short etudes for beginning to intermediate classical guitar students. Fantaisie Élégiaque is a major repertoire work for solo performers and the far more substantial piece imo, maybe an OPO for Sor. The "Marche funèbre" movement (about 9:35 in this video) is one of my favourite pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buhQtXKc88U

Any further recording recommendations for these Schumann works? He has somehow mostly washed over me in the past. This seems as good a time as any for some immersion!

Thanks for the heads up, Sund4r – that is indeed a worthier piece than the Op. 60. If you've got any guitar recommendations that I'm likely to overlook for the coming decades, do let me know.

As for Schumann recording recommendations:

Papillons, Op. 2 – Sviatoslav Richter (1963)
Carnaval, Op. 9 – Maria João Pires
Piano Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 11 – Leif Ove Andsnes
Etudes symphoniques, Op. 13 – Maurizio Pollini
Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 14 – András Schiff
Kinderszenen, Op. 15 – Radu Lupu
Kreisleriana, Op. 16 – Alexandre Lonquich
Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 – Martha Argerich
Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 – Marc-André Hamelin
Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op. 26 – Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

No Davidsbundlertanze??? That would have been my vote most likely. Not that you don’t have ample Schumann but it’s his crown jewel imo.

I've never gotten into them tbh. Which recording would you recommend?

Charles Rosen, Benjamin Frith, Maria Tipo.

Rosen’s sections on Schumann in The Romantic Generation are some of my favorite music writing anywhere ever. Was a real turning point in my appreciation of what Schumann was up to in his diabolically elusive and allusive solo piano works

Actually that whole book would be urgent and key for this installment of this poll

Duly noted, thanks. I haven't read Rosen and am only acquainted with his pianism via his Elliott Carter recordings.

Dude you will LOVE the romantic generation
It’s actually one of my top 5 non fiction books period

Sold! I'm fascinated with German Romanticism in all of its forms (literary, philosophical, pictorial, musical, etc.) so it's my fault for not getting to it sooner.

absolutely cosine the rosen writing love, he's great

listening to an extremely crackly youtube of the cleveland symphonie fantastique (by choice - it seemed a more me-friendly interpretation than the cleaner boston one)

With Boulez conducting?

nah some chap called rodzinsky, maybe i'll look for the boulez

*rodzinski

i am grand charlatan lol

i'm listening to Fantaisie Élégiaque and maybe it's me but this _really_ sounds like guitar tuning, like if it wasn't written in the 1830s i'd assume that was on purpose and it was some kind of postmodern thing

For a powerful recent recording of the SF, look to Les Siecles conducted by Francois Xavier Roth.

^ seconded. All period instruments, to boot.

I'd also like to rep for Schumann's 2nd Sonata, whose first tempo marking is 'So rasch wie möglich' ('as fast as possible'):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1y9yQoDCng

boulez one is pretty sick i must say

Indeed. All finely hued sinewy analytic colours.

My fave of the three Schumann sonatas is definitely the first, but all three are great. For #2 I keep coming back to Bernd Glemser, Jorg Demus, and Richter.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Went with the Fantasie in the end.

I've certainly spent most time listening to The Hebrides.

Kreisleriana, as a representative of Schumann at his gnarliest and most formally unique

Is there any reason why there are so many pieces by Felix Mendelssohn on the list, but nothing by her sister? A lot of her best work was composed in the 1830s, such as the 1831 Bible Oratorio and the 1834 string quartet.

I'm not a huge fan of her music but I agree that the string quartet should have been an option.

I ended up voting for 24 Preludes over Symphonie Fantastique, just bc I have already voted for a symphony and not for any solo works.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Thanks for the recording tips by the way. This ended up being Schumann Piano Works Week in this house!

Only 14 votes? :(

I suppose it was to be expected after last week's Beethoven-Schubert bonanza.

Which recording of the Preludes do you goodly people recommend?

I'm a Pollini stan when it comes to Chopin in particular, so… Maurizio Pollini.

He has a fine forehead.

Ivan Moravec for the preludes

Here’s my top 12 Schumann piano albums
Davidsbundlertanze + Carnaval - Rosen (Sony)
Kreisleriana + Kinderszenen - Argerich (DG)
Fantasie + Carnaval - Arrau* (Philips/Decca whatever UMG call it now)
Sonata #1 + Kreisleriana - Perahia (Sony)
Richter DG recital incl Fantasiestucke + Waldszenen (DG)
Humoreske et al - Richter (Melodiya)
Symphonic Etudes + Humoreske - Andrew de Grado (Centaur)
Sonata #2 et al - Bernd Glemser (Naxos)
Fantasie (coupled with Schubert) - Pollini (DG)
Novelettes - Jorg Demus (Nuova Era and other labels)
Davidsbundlertanze + Fantasiestucke - Benjamin Frith (Naxos)
Kinderszenen + Kreisleriana - Horowitz (Sony)

*not sure what the current availability of Arrau’s Schumann recordings is, I’m sure they are in print, but in the Arrau Plays Schumann box set I have, Carnaval and Fantasie are on one disc and are both absolutely crushing

Yes you end up with three Kreislerianas but whattayagonnado people like recording it

These polls are so great - just what I needed in terms of focussing what has been a hideously disparate approach to stuff for so many years. I've always dabbled with him but it turns out I absolutely bloody love Chopin.