It's right between shift and tab.
Sorabij of course, didn't you know yet, why?
Rach not Bach!!! Rachmaninov is the best and I will have no arguments against him - or heads will roll!!! I'm obsessed with Rachmaninov, Rachmaninov and more Rachmaninov. Oh, and did I mention anything about RACHMANINOV?!?!?!Hmmph.
HELL NO... HIS MUSIC WAS AWFUL!!!!(Don't hit me stevie)... but it's true.
I'm waiting for Opus Clavicembalisticum to come through the post after i bought it on eBay. It will be the first Sorabji I have heard and I am awaiting "a cataclysmic ending that cuts like nitric acid" or whatever the composer said... lol... Tom
Sickening, absolutely sickening..., June 22, 2005 Reviewer: John Carey (America) - See all my reviews This product is very lucky to have recieved two stars from me. It is, in a word, terrible. I do not believe there is any one word that can truly describe the atrocity that G.D. Madge has committed! A scandal! A travesty! It is because of performances like THIS that Sorabji banned performances of his works in the first place! This performance is so terrible, it is OBSCENE! First of all, in so many places, Madge practically improvises. In the parts where there are large jumping chords, Madge merely pounds out random notes. He does not follow the music. This is what causes many to think that this piece is really bad... they think it is nothing but relentless "banging", but let me tell you, it is not! I have studied the score for this piece for a very long time now, and that is NOT what Sorabji really wrote! I could practically point out parts on every page where Madge completely fakes the performance, often not even trying to hit the right notes. So, let us start with the very first movement. This truly sets up what will follow. Right when the music starts to get hard, he starts to make mistake after mistake. Aside from that, his playing is not clean. Later, he just starts hitting random notes, a skill that he definitely has mastered, I must say. The second movement is no exception. Though there are moments when his playing is bearable, for the most part, it is no better than the first movement. The majority of Fuga I is faked. The Fantasia is actually all right for the most part, but he doesn't play cleanly, and at the end, he goes back to hitting random notes. His entire Coda-Stretta is improvised. Any thing he plays that resembles the actual music even the slightest bit is merely a coincidence. And the end can make your ears bleed... So, I gave this two stars because he played a few parts nicely, but I would not recommend this recording to anyone. I, personally, would wait for the Powell recording, since he apparently knows what he is talking about.
Introito: He clearly struggles in sections, and he has little clarity. On the first page there is a slip in the Contrary motion arpeggios, and the left hand quintuplets of the third system are completely butchered, with minimal accuracy. On the second page, he plays the ascending scale passage fairly decently but on the way down we get some double notes coming in. He struggles with those and in one beat he plays many wrong notes. The quintuplets of the second system are MOSTLY okay, but in one or two instances he tries to get away with random notes in the bass. The Presto section of this is not very clear or good at all. From the beginning chords of this section he makes many slips and wrong notes and the playing seems so FORCED. As he reaches the top of the ascending patterns, he plays lots of wrong notes. It doesn't seem as though he is improvising but it's like a BORDERLINE of one standard of accuracy to the next, if you know what I mean. When he is improvising your standards are MUCH lower and you are more pleased when he plays the notes, than displeased when he doesn't since LATER in the piece, accuracy becomes something of a rarity. After this section it's basically a recapitulation of the first page (without the adagio) but his playing is very forced again. Apart from a few minor slips this is it. THIS IS ONE OF HIS MOST ACCURATE MOVEMENTS. Preludio-Corale: This is basically the same story. It opens with those ascending semiquaver accompaniments, which he does not play clearly. After a few more messed up passages, his playing settles down. That is, until the third page, where he seems to struggle in the top system, which to be honest is NOT really that difficult, it's just a bit awkward to play. But he plays ver uncleanly again. The same can be said for the semiquavers on the last two systems of the page. The final wave of triplet chords have many wrong notes in them, they seem to be faked, more so than the presto of the introito, where he seems to GENUINELY struggle, but here he doesn't try very hard. The next page isn't so bad, but the one after that is horrendous. The first system recalls the second system of the second page of the Introito, but here Madge plays far more random notes in the left hand. The last two systems are simply awful. He plays far too heavily and disregards the score completely in one moment on the second system of this page. He even tries to get away with a few audacious splashes of random clusters towards the end of the page. The next page isn't too bad, but there are some strangely missed chords occasionally. The two pages after these are the most DREADFUL. He misses towards the end of the first bar and plays a tone lower than he should. After this system it's littered with wrong notes and effortless (in a bad way) playing for the rest of the page. The top of page fifteen is the most disgraceful. This is the worst passage yet. He completely makes it up, basing the random notes he plays on what the notes on the score LOOK LIKE. After these two systems, his playing is mostly fine until page 18, where he improvises the top line with the syncopated chords. The ending of this part is full of wrong notes, and he seems to make a big deal out of the bass, making it clouded with pedal and seemingly more dissonant. The A pedal solo isn't as bad but I think he slows down WAY too much. Now the first Fugue is where it starts going horribly wrong. His exposition is flawless, as many of the fugal expositions are in his recording. After the expositions little things creep up in his performance. Little note slips and things like that. They develop into huge problems though. Page 20 is fine but from the section of the second system on page 21 which goes onto the third, the end of this section is faked, in a way. The notes are still there, but he adds others, and the voice to which he adds them is the dominant one on his recording where it shouldn't be as there is a full statement of the subject in this section. After this the recording is okay for a while, but he starts improvising again in sections such as the third system of page 22. AT THE END OF PAGE 23, HE IS IMPROVISING, and he continues to do so all the way through the first system of page 24. It sounds RIDICULOUS when he makes a random return to the score after this section. The section that follows on pages 24-27 isn't quite the same on his recording as it is when I play it. Perhaps, some parts are faked, but in places he choses different subjects than I (there are often multiple entries of the subject). There are a few slips after this but it's quite accurate otherwise. When we get to page 28, we lose this. It seems his need to play the written notes vanishes when the notation extends to four stave systems. It starts properly on system two of page 28, where he improvises substantial amounts of the upper staves. This only increases as this two pages progress, climaxing in some of the most pathetic banging on the second system of page 29. Slight pause.... It continues with newfound accuracy for a few seconds before he diverges again. And he stays there until he decides the final thunderous chord of G#minor sounds better as mezzo-piano. Page 28 is the borderline, if you will, where he switches from making many mistakes and improvising occasionally in the more difficult sections, to COMPLETELY FAKING MOST of what follows. The Fantasia is a movement which I believed to be among the more accurate ones until lately. Beware! When it seems like he is playing what is written. He sometimes disguises the fake lines by muddling them under the other EASIER parts that he plays correctly. This continues throughout the movement until the last page where he plays complete bs. It's all random notes on this page, everything is embellished with dissonance. Most of the second fugue seems to be faked, EVEN the subjects. Nothing is really significant in his recording of this movement, except for the annoying banging at the end. Enough said. Interludium Primum. Completely improvised, except for the "simple" variations, the ones with less activity. Cadenza I. All but the first few lines on one stave alone is completely improvised. Fuga Tertia Triplex. Same annoying story as the first fugue. Except it lasts three times as long. Interludium ALTERUM Toccata: Not clean in the opening, and much improvisation. Adagio: Mostly right notes, but inaccurate rhythms. Passacaglia: Same as the variations. The last variation might as well have not been written for all his recording does for it. Cadenza II: Almost entirely faked, but he makes it seem correct, like the second fugue, but like his performance of the second fugue, nothing is memorable or interesting. He likes to end movements with some clusters. Fuga IV: Like the first fugue, but with less accuracy and is four times as big. Coda-Stretta: Never mind. There's too little to compare in the score.
Jesus H. Christ, what next?
JESUS Has a middle name beginning with H??? I didn't know that... What is it???
Bach is the greatest because, regardless of what we instrumentalists think, all the composers of every era have all admired Bach.
I fail to understand you.
Not Mozart.
Topic: WHICH COMPOSER IS THE GREATSEST OF ALL TIME 