What a marvellous memory,you have a gift Bernard!

awesome and beautiful work of writing Bernard thank you. I stumbled across your blog while looking for something else. Having gone to SS Peter and Pauls and then Whitefriars too it was an unusual journey down memory lane ( I think I may have been a couple of years before you), many familiar names of teachers and students and places (including the evil Mr Christopher's and the peculiar Doc Walsh), Thank you

Bernard, I've read many of your highly eloquent yet striking reviews on Amazon. I am a great admirer of Bruckner myself. Maybe we have thoughts to share. Best wishes

You are a great talent. You reference so widely and deeply.  I marvel

 

Love these the most Biff, the ones when truly stick the boots into a clubs supporters and culture, brilliant. Ahhhh my lord id forgotten the great Biff and his tales

 

David:
In this post, socially awkward and virginal poster Biffinator goes undercover in an attempt to seduce the girl of his dreams Big Shazza, played here in a virtuoso performance by Jabba the Hutt.

While the post is beautifully written and starts promisingly enough, it soon denigrates into one dimensional situations and stereotypes, and is ultimately unsatisfying. Margret?

Margret:
Yes, I know. I normally like Bifffinator’s work, but is this case he could have just written ‘all Tiger supporters are fat feral bogans’ and it would have had the same comedic affect wouldn’t it? Oddly enough, the funniest part is where he meets Big Shazza and can’t get it up. It certainly raises some questions about the Biffinator doesn’t it?

David:
Well I certainly laughed. I’m giving this post 1 ½ stars.

Margret:
I like style over substance, I’m giving it 2 ½.

David * 1/2
Margret **1/2

 

David Claris - Bernard,  I am a pianist and singer by training, and collecting recordings for over 50 years; so, naturally I too have very strong opinions about music and  its performers. Your writing has a very arresting style with it's at times bizarre references, and personal argot that often escapes me, but the nugget of your opinion is always clear. I seek out your reviews and am often talked in or out of trying an unfamiliar recording by your enthusiasm, or lack thereof.  Thanks for your courteous reply and for NOT telling this old poofter literally to bugger off. May good fortune attend your every endeavor

 

Bernard, your latest Amazon review in combination with the absence of the Domestic Management has promted me to crank it up and play this loudly on my ancient but dependable Pioneer amp and KEF speakers, which still sound great. I have the old DG Privilege bargain issue with the skyscape you so eloquently describe. The sound isn't remastered but still does justice to the Jesus-Christus-Kirche recording venue - a bit bass-heavy, as you say, but rather that than tinny or muffled.  I love my Brahms symphonies played by almost anyone of the Old School - Toscanini, Furtie, Szell - and even Levine is superb - but HvK is supreme. Thanks for nudging me - R

 

You're so cute.  Your reviews are charming if at time abstruse but I mostly share your tastes.  If you were gay, I would move to Australia and marry you.

 

I did.  It was a great game.  And I wanted Melbourne to win. You are long suffering no more, my friend.

 

I stumbled across your blog through one of my rare WF related googles.

I went a little later than you, 1991-96. I'm amazed at how little it changed in that decade. I can't say it was a bad school, I just can't say it was a good school. It was like if you made the debater team and married a Sion girl you were as accomplished as you could be there. We had our own Doc, called Mr XXXXXX the sports/maths teacher. He would insist on watching us in the shower (like really watching) with a look on his face we had not seen before but fearfully recognised as lust. My first dayI was dragged into the maths corridor to see a large photo of the year before's football team including him with a prominent erection standing by their side. That hallway was known as "XXXXXX's cracker" for my time there. I have some good and funny messages, like the in-school suspension I suffered while in the next room the police interviewed year 9s that had been caught growing cannabis near the old (your current) gym. I also enjoy when you meet someone and find they are from WF, We always have a teacher or two in common despite our ages. I guess in your case that would be Duncan, Eddie DeJong and Mal Parris. Of course not forgetting the gentleman Father Kierce. Anyway thanks for the good read :)

 

 

I am smiling at your Schiff Schubert review. How that man is lauded and rewarded is beyond me; I have never heard anything by him worth wasting my ears on; he is the Mayor of Dullsville.And you are right: of course he takes refuge in the Period Taliban ranks.

 

Thanks for your email Bernie- Your emails always give me a smile. Yes I am well and happy (ish!)- I think we all just have to think of the positives in life currently. So exciting for the Dees! So sad Ricey not here to rub his face in it! Go Dees – Edwina Morning Bernie Was just sifting through my emails and noted I hadn't sent you a congratulatory email - so here it is... WELL DONE DEES!! Hope you enjoyed the day- and watching it again and again and again!! Edwina

 

Thank you for your late HvK review of Schumann 4 / Dvorak 8. I very much agree here with your points. This recording is one of those rare reviews where I cannot agree completely with Ralph - he made it in glowing terms. I feel this is a recording that is quite sad - as you said, there is no need to better his 70’s effort in Schumann and I feel Dvorak symphony is one the loud side, even violent, and do not really do justice to this very fine work. I haven’t compared HvK earlier attempts, but Kubelik, Szell and Kertesz - and Walter!  - they so well understood this work. I feel partly that his last years were sort of waste, redoing things was understandable, but not at all necessary. His Bruckner is an exception, though. What a pity he did not started some late new affairs - for example with Sibelius no 3. It is not so bad!

 

Dear Bernard, Many thanks for this wonderful mail. I am very honoured. Such a great pleasure.  The situation in classical music is very difficult in this time. Corona is killing a lot! But we want to think positively and maybe, next year, we can restart, also recording cd's. All the best, Martin

 

My thanks to Bernard Michael O'Hanlon for bringing this to my attention via the machinations of Amazon.

 

Will repeat here my comments made elsewhere. This is not my favorite, however this finale is terrific, the most intimidating I have heard. So, even if it is not how I prefer this finale conceived and played, that kind of bully is unique and must be experienced. And Bernard Michael is right, it probably has to do with the Zeitgeist. Btw, I know the Koch appearance of this recording.

 

Bernard. Thank you! Is this available on the usual streaming platforms? Edit. Seems it's a tad rare. I'm looking down the side of my desk and in the dark corners of my room. You're the person who introduced me to this performance. It's incendiary, and the experimental stereo is so good is spooky. Like a time machine. I'd love to hear this remastering. Edit #2. Oh look, there it is behind a dusty shelf. I can't wait to sit down in the late hours tonight and revisit this.

 

I am grateful to Bernard Michael O'Hanlon for alerting me to the genius of this work. For too long, I'd thought of Saint-Saëns only in terms of Carnival of the Animals and the Organ Symphony. The Requiem, however, trumps both these works for sheer beauty. It's astonishing. The Benedictus is one of the loveliest things I've ever heard. If you haven't yet heard this, waste as little time as possible in addressing the situation.

 

(your reviews) are worth a lot, Bernard (and the cds they have made me buy are also worth a lot!). Please also review Finghin Collins et al in the Mozart Piano Quartets (on the Claves label) and the Gaede Trio in the same works.

 

 

which in my experience is the best state to be in when trying to listen to almost anything by the priapic prelate, so I laughed when I read your latest smack-down, couched in dstinctive blasphemous terms which will undoubtedly have you excommunicated.

 

I don't know where you find that endless succession of metaphors in which to couch your thoughts; I am far more prosaic - but that was one of the things which attracted me to your reviews all those years ago.Amazon seems like a pale shadow or distant memory now that it has been emasculated as a platform (now there really are some mixed metaphors for you...).

 

I took a look to remind myself. I think it was the line 'Herbie has tied a search-light to his wanger as he patrols the streets of Warsaw' that made me collapse with laughing. And you're welcome, thanks to your vociferous recommendation I obtained a copy of Bohm's sublime sinfonia concertante disc, amongst others. And Dave has inspired a number of great purchases, such as Berglund's Sibelius symphonies  Keep up the good work!

 

Ha, Bernard, I know you are as one with Dave on the subject of Norrington(and probably Rattle too).   And I'm sure you are enjoying Dave's humour, I still remember a hilarious review you posted of Karajan's Ein Heldenleben where the maestro was astride a bike in leathers that could have featured in Dave's review of bizarre disc covers!

 

Thanks for adding me, Bernard. Been bookmarking your wonderful reviews for years! Peace

 

Bernard, greetings from sunny Athens - Greece. I am enjoying your reviews on Mozart and Bruckner at Amazon. As a passionate Mozartian my self, I would like you to share with me your favourite Mozart works...I always enjoy Mozart talks. Many thanks and stay safe.

 

Bernard, I laughed aloud at the succession of inspired metaphors characterising Andsnes' weedy Mozart in your latest review.  I don't think they'll borrow it for his website.

 

Thank you Bernard, but you’ve expressed far greater thoughts in more eloquent ways and your knowledge of the Classical world outweighs mine by far, as does that of the rest of the people here.  Still, I look forward to spending what remains of the time allotted to me in wonder at the sophistication and wisdom of those who laid the foundations of Western civilization. It gives me a tremendous sense of security and continuity. Civilization without the exchange and clash of ideas and the impetus to explore and adopt new ideas, will inevitably crumble. The things I’ve learnt here about music and all the trimmings in the shape of history, ideas and circumstances that in different shapes accompany music have been a catalyst for me and filled a well that never will run dry. An antidote and recalibration in the present day irrationality and misguided moralism that often seem so stifling and wayward.

 

thanks bern have no choice go dees 

 

That recording is very close in quality to my favourite, the Krips 1955, and features the same Giovanni and Leporello; I just marginally prefer Krips' trio of leading ladies, especially as Price is too gusty as Elvira and Nilsson is wrong in Mozart. But the ever-under-rated works up a real head of steam in the final scene and the sound engineering puts a reverb on the demons' chorus which is really effective.

 

It took me a long time to decide on which Bruckner 9 to take the plunge with, but Bernard O'Hanlon (and others reviewers) persuaded me to go with this one and I have no regrets. In these days of the internet it is possible to sample various performances rather than go on blind faith but on receiving this cd I found it to be as dramatic and as good a sound as anyone could want. In recent years I have tired somewhat of Bruckner's massive sound in his granite like works but this certainly is a stirring performance. The key to this one in particular is the choice of tempi in the Scherzo, Barenboim elucidates an electricity and stark terror that is wonderful without ever becoming vulgar or unmusical. Anyone who questions Barenboim's abilities as a conductor should note this record, together with his outstanding recording of the Beehtoven violin concerto with Perlman. Highly recommended to any Bruckner fans!

 

Re-listening to it reminds me that what I love about Sanderling's Bruckner is its drive and purpose - no mooning about over the slow passages and he always gives the brass free rein,  Dopey Uncle Dave complains about the sound; it might be nearly sixty years old but it's damn good; what he needs is either new equipment or a haring aid, the daft old bugger.What's a little background hiss compared with that kind of transcendence?

 

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Dave Hurwitz for his delightful commentaries.  But I also have greatly enjoyed yours--that is, your Amazon reviews, which are sometimes provocative, sometimes outrageously funny, and often as not right on the mark.  I have appreciated your comments on my reviews as well.  On Amazon you know me as "Johannes Climacus."  Keep on reviewing!

 

Bernard O'Hanlon Thank you, Bernard. Good to be able to read it again. I do so enjoy your work."

 

Morning Bernie  Your timing is impeccable. Unfortunately I am just sitting here preparing for his funeral He died at home holding my hand on Friday. We’re all doing ok. We would love you to join us. Edwina

 

K 334 - Bernard, I find myself playing it every day - in Karajan's latest version - I am so charmed by it.

 

Before Jesus, reality was monochromatic: its image is the slab, the monolith, the monotonous pasture. After Him, truth is dual, alternating, riddled: its image is the chessboard, tilled fields, Byzantine tessellation, Romanesque zigzag, Siennese striping, and the medieval fool’s motley. Christ stands in another light, and His magnificent blitheness, His scorn of all the self-protecting contracts that bind men to the earth, is the shadow of another sun, a shadow brighter than worldly light . . . — John Updike, A Month of Sundays

 

I did enjoy your latest diatribe against the Man-Perm's feeble assault on LvB. You excel in the art of humorous polemic.  I love the fact that no sooner had his appointment to butcher the LSO been confirmed than he stamped his tiny foot and declared that in the light of Brexit he was off back to Germany and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2023. I wonder what he'll do to that fine orchestra. One advantage of the quasi-pandemic is that he hasn't had much opportunity to mess up the LSO. He represents everything I abhor about European socialism and aesthetic reductivism.

 

I can't guess who are those three boyos in the picture with the lighthouse, but your inset photograph is grand. I had no idea you are so young.

 

This is a reasonable recording of the piano concertos. I purchased it on the "recommendation" of that word smith extraordinaire Bernard Michael O'Hanlon. Under normal circumstances this should be 3 to 4 star recording, but since Mr. BMO went out of his way to squeeze every ounce of linguistic vitriol I felt obliged to correct the average. It is amazing that the education process has been so wasted.

 

I didn't say this on the phone but well done good sir! Your stakeholder engagement is legendary. Told you we weren't letting this go and we didn't! Congrats mate!

 

LoL, always with anticipated humor awaits your delightful emails  My grandmother told me long ago a 😊 a day keeps the doctor away.

 

You really ought to save all of your reviews, in case the next step of Amazon's online clearout (following their cessation of notifications concerning comments, and then the deletion of all comments) is to erase everyone's reviews from their website. I actually cracked up with laughter when I read your review of Gardiner's Brahms 2 with its deliberate misquotation of T. S. Eliot; my amusement was partly because a few hours earlier I'd read your review of Furtwangler's 1949 Wiesbaden Brahms 4, which T. S. Eliot gets quoted correctly. I ordered both CDs the same evening . . . Your review of Stravinsky's Agon conducted by Ashkenazy amused me too. I've found about ten works by Stravinsky that I can't do without, but as for the rest, I'm reminded of Stravinsky's comments on Hindemith's music (though he admitted that he didn't know it very well): "moderately interesting to look at [but] as arid and indigestible as cardboard and as little nourishing".

 

 

Dear EP --  It just so happened that the *moment* your message about having your haircut as a kid made you feel like a king, I was sitting in a barber(ette)'s chair.  I showed her the message and she started to tear-up, as well squeal in delight.  I brought up your photo, and all the barberettes gathered round to comment on how cute you are and how you look just like  "the bad boy on 'Leave it to Beaver'"! Geoffrey’s story about the barber’s reaction to EP’s photo is sweet and the photo is great, a boy content with life and assured.

 

One can no longer leave comments on Amazon reviews, so I am writing to thank you for a number of your recommendations that have truly made life better during this past year of pestilence. Richard Osborne's Karajan was an instructive joy, and I thank you for that. Likewise for Maksymiuk's Brandenburgs (his Haydn as well), and so many others. Your advocacy of Karajan's '44 Bruckner 8 is the immediate inspiration for this message (impossible to believe that it's 75 years old, or that, as you say, one hardly misses the first movement). Cheers, sir, and thanks again for your fine prose and much-appreciated tutelage.

 

Will be catching up with your choices. Always enjoy the Amazon reviews and rants, Bernard. May the Bruckner Society remain Heaven-sent.

 

I am laughing at your evisceration of that sorry release. Out of curiosity, I took a look at the cast list of singers and of course recognised the two male, British artists as two of the saddest excuses for singers in my experience. Allan Clayton has the weediest, whitest "tenor" voice imaginable and Neal Davies pretends to sing baritone without a hint of depth or resonance in his windy tone - he's been blighting the circuit for years; I heard him live in Birmingham twenty years ago and he was crap then.  O tempora...!

 

Hi Bernard I found this e-mail address on Blogger, hopefully it's active. I've been following your highly entertaining classical music reviews on Amazon for many years. Your reviews, in addition to those by some other reviewers you probably know, have been my frame of reference when looking for and buying recordings. Personally I keep a low profile and haven't participated much in the reviewing community, but I do pay attention to it. Recently Amazon seems to have disabled comments on their reviews. I can't find them anywhere, and presumably all the interesting discussion that took place there is now lost. The general trend with Amazon seems to be that it's getting worse and worse. Often the best reviews are listed at the end, while short one-sentence reviews get preference. Amazon seems to show little regard for all the work people have put in for free to improve their site. This makes me wonder what will happen in the future. Do you keep a copy of all of your reviews? Imagine if we lost all those Communiques with News from the Bach Front! This brings me to my next point. Recently David Hurwitz created a YouTube channel where he talks about classical music recordings. I had been hoping for something like that for years. I've been thinking that if anyone else would be a good candidate to make a similar kind of YouTube channel with discussion of top recommendations of various works, you would be just the guy to do it. What do you think about this idea? I think it would be wonderful to hear you talk about your favourite recordings in the repertoire that you like. I would be happy to help with that if at all I could

 

Best review you ever wrote. K 595 & Death of a Spider

 

Tremendous energy and insight. I have nothing to add to Bernard Michael O'Hanlon's excellent review other than endorsement of his praise.

 

Fellow-reviewer Bernard O'Hanlon is quite right to cite the slow movement of K.496 as proof of how brightly the flame of Mozart's genius burns at certain points in these works

 

Thank you so much for your lovely & interesting message .

I wanted to acknowledge it straight away but also wanted to write a proper reply. Unfortunately life has been a little hectic since the wake and I’m afraid I’m still unable to do your message justice with this brief reply . Now suddenly so many days have passed so I thought I’d write and pass on my email address and let you know I shall write a proper reply soon . Evan’s funeral was a wonderful celebration of such a kind man . It was also a treat to see old friends and remember times past . Nice, yes, to discover also some of us still share that which brought us together all those decades ago. It’s night shift & we’ve just left Box Hill Hospital . I’m so tired tonight, six hours to go . God bless,

 

"If there is one thing in life I've learned, it's to totally ignore Irish Australians. Wow. You jealous aussie unmusical idiot. I bet if the conductor was an aussie convict you would be praising this music to the hilt. Get a life if that is at all possible with you. O, and go and get your hearing checked as soon as possible. Jealousy is so unbecoming!"

 

Your purchase has prompted me to listen again to that double Decca disc of the Francesca da Rimini excerpts and Fedora, Bernard; the singing is absolutely fantastic and I was especially impressed by the former, which, as Geoffrey says, is hardly tuneful but is somehow very memorable, particularly when sung by Del Monaco and Olivero. I was really surprised to find that I think it's superior to the main event, "Fedora". A lot of those mostly forgotten, verismo operas are all sound and fury, lacking memorable tunes or moments, but that one stands out.

 

What an exhausting read Bernard . I usually get a kick out of your reviews but this one is beyond me .

 

I just read your review of Jansons' Sibelius 3 and 5, and you mention Karajan's 5th on EMI.  Are you referring to the later recording with the BPO, or the earlier, mono recording? By the way, the person who introduced me to Bruckner (about 35 years ago) is a fan - as am I - of your reviews.  Although, it's rare I don't have to consult an online dictionary, or something to do with history after reading them lol.  It's not uncommon for an email conversation between us to go something like this. Doug  'There's a new Bruckner 8 out by Thielemann.' John  'Oh, has Bernard reviewed it yet?' It's actually, Father John, as he is a Ukrainian Catholic priest.   He agrees on your assessment of Klemperer's Bruckner 6.  '... and It ain't Klemperer.'   Thank you, by the way, for your reviews on Sawallisch's Bruckner on Orfeo.  The 6th was awesome!  Almost as if I was hearing it for the first time.  There are many other recordings I've purchased on your recommendation, but can't remember all of them right now. 

 

Like you, I will never understand the fierce defence of Jochum as a Brucknerian by diehard advocates. From the very first time I heard those EMI Dresden recordings years ago, I disliked all that nervy, jumpy pulling about of tempi and dynamics, which is not flexible and organic, Furtwangler style, but crude and counter-productive in the mystery stakes.

 

I have no words, really, to express anything beyond what Bernard wrote. This recording comes from a place I'm not even sure is accessible to us any longer. One can hear The Truth as music here. Far beyond the reach of any words. Music as The Word. Moved. Broken. Melted. That's what I am.

 

Great review Bernard. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you have such an incisive way of describing music and what makes recordings such as these so special. Who else would find echos of Ashurbanipal and ritual lion hunts in the early Sibelian idiom? Your description of the S6 as a "Sibelian Winterreise" is also memorable....

 

You review made me laugh out loud! I couldn't concur more. I'm envious of your writing gift and wish I had that ability. The use of the word "revelatory" is so misused, when in fact, the word different is more applicable. Revelatory in who's mind?

 

Agree with Bernard on this. The B4 and B7 HVK recorded for EMI in the autumn of 1970 have a unique glow about them. The openings of both symphonies are - to my ears - unimprovably beautiful here.

 

Hi Bernard, Correct, Tebaldi never had the type of voice for Butterfly. However, her 1951 mono recording catches her in glorious voice. Probably no one has ever brought a more sumptuous voice to the part. I still listen to it and it gives me chills. If you want to hear a Butterfly more, I imagine, as Puccini imagined it, you could do well to listen to the 1939 recording with Toti del Monte and Beniamino Gigli as Pinkerton. The sound is very good for its age.

Keep on with the great reviews and best wishes for the holidays.

 

Bernard, please don't insult me by even mentioning Gergiev, I hate him and his conducting more than I can say.  Have you given up writing inimitable, or indeed  any reviews on amazon? I reviewed Thielemann Bruckner 8 severely, it seemed to me magnificent sound with nothing behind.     But I enjoy quite a lot of his new Meistersinger, especially the clarity of the Quintet, probably the best in that respect since Kna's commercial recording. What do you think od Act 3 of Tristan from Zurich? Best wishes for 2021, Michael

 

Dear Bernard, It’s my joy if you find something of interest in my collection. I’m indebted and grateful for all the new perspectives and doors in music the forum has opened for me. You invited me and I’m richer for it and always grateful to you.

 

Bernard thank you for articulating your reaction to HvK's S4.A few years ago I acquired the 'official remastered edition' casually titled 'Orchestral Spectaculars' -mostly Philharmonia recordings but also including HvK's powerful 1957 Berlin Dvorak 9th. The S4 struck me exactly as you describe as starkly dangerous, like a terrified recounting of a forbidden legend.

 

Hello Bernard. Been reading your Amazon reviews with great pleasure for years. Anyone who loves Mozart, Schumann, Karajan, and Kempff, AND is fascinated by the Wehrmacht is all right by me. Best wishes, David.

 

 

I enjoyed that review not just because it puts the boot into Gergiev's paltry effort but also because you out the wretched Michael Cookson, who thinks himself an authority on everything - and gives everything rapturous reception.  I have frequently to edit his drivel and he has no real command of English or any proper powers of discrimination. Keep it up. Unfortunately, I think I am going to get the whole set from the BJ for review. I shall just have to tell it like it is.

 

Praise indeed from the Master himself and I thank you - I was going to say much the same about your latest review which has already attracted the admiration of Stephen Crittenden and rightly dubbed "spine-tingling".

 

Bernard, Yet again one of your spine-tingling reviews has me ordering music I don't know and never previously felt much needed to get acquainted with. Thank God you're not reviewing new Monteverdi or Josquin CDs every other day or I wouldn't have a penny left. Joyeux Noël to you and yours.

 

A great review, Bernard, and right on the money. I had not heard that Klemperer had said this about Szell, but in my opinion the same could be said about Reiner. I have never understood the adulation towards both men.

 

I find Mr. O'Hanlon often witty, usually informative and always entertaining. There are even times when I agree with him. Always good to read you; not that I always agree or even "get" many of your allusions - or jargon. (I'm catching on, though...) Keep writing. You, too, Ralph; nice to have a counterbalance. When you both agree - miracle de Dieu - we have a winner.

 

"Make no mistake: we are indebted to Schubert. We’ll never repay him. Schubert always meets us where we are." You are on form, my friend.

 

You're on your best form with this one, Bernard. I wonder how D.H. Lawrence knew what a day in the life of an Etruscan was like. Strong imagination in a writer is usually a virtue, but one still needs to hold the reins. His description belongs in the same purple-with-gold-embroidery class as Walter Pater's of Mona Lisa: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants ... ."

 

But I get what I think is your point -- the religious aesthetic needs a wodge of danger, even recklessness, for purity to transform.

As for writing reviews - you are the expert. Communique > 30 now? --- I have been checking on your progress from time to time. Your idiomatic use of the language makes those reviews at once humbling and entertaining. perhaps no man is a Virgil, but so far your guidance has worked quite well.

 

A good haul, all the same!  I have those Beethovens and like them a lot.  Hard to imagoine anything by Sir Neville beggaring belief, but his Bach is very good, so I'll keep an eye out for those two and see for myself.  Your recommendation of Walter's K550-1 was spot on--memories of other, lesser versions have been completely erased (thank God). 

 

Bernard, thanks to this review I downloaded Kempff's Liszt recording. I had been aware of it but having never been a big Liszt fan hadn't bothered. Utterly dazzling!!! Somehow on the way through (must be the social isolation, although here in Sydney it seems people have suddenly decided it's all over), I purchased Claire Huangci's Chopin Nocturnes disc and her Rachmaninov disc, and Tamas Vasary's Nocturnes disc (after reading your review). Five stars all round. And now Liszt is on the radar, which to this early music fan was never ever on the cards!

 

Hi Bernard, Would you know if the sound quality of the Koch release is any better than the Membran release?  I know you've reviewed this, but as Amazon sometimes puts the wrong review under what's being advertised, I can't find your review of this release.  All I find is a review for a Bruckner 8 by Maazel, or some Christmas cd.  I likely found your review of the Koch release under a different Bruckner 8 recording; meaning, you mentioned this one while reviewing another Bruckner 8, if that makes sense?  I have about 30 recordings of this symphony (not counting what's in box sets) so I would appreciate it if you responded. Thank you from Canada,

 

Bernard, I recently compared the 98 Karajan Edition Bruckner 7 with the EMI Red Spine and Warner remaster. I concur that the 98 remastering is the best. It showcases the acoustic and the balances are natural. Clarity is better than the Red Spine but not at the expense of bloom, etc. I like the Warner but it seems like a bit of a remix that is more treble focused. The string tremolo and lower string counterpoint really come out nicely in the ‘98. Besides the Bruckner 7, I have but a few of the ‘98 Edition: the Haydn 83/101/104 (in its 2007 livery), Sibelius 2/5 and 6/7 (w Philharmonia), and the third-billed (??) Grunewald Chruch Bruckner 8 with the blue cover. Those discs have such lovely covers - and they are becoming quite rare. Clearly aficionados prize them. You should not part with them!

 

Thank you.  But it was YOUR prose that brought us all together, Bernard.  

 

The emotional atmosphere at the time and place of the recording can scarcely be imagined (and I hope, for the good of all of us, it will remain so). Only six years had passed since Hamburg had become fire, then ash. At least some of the orchestra players had lost family members and friends in the bombing, which along with Dresden was among the worst allied war crimes. Bruckner insisted on what might have seemed impossible to their scarred minds: that they scan the skies of the human predicament and declare that even after the worst that time delivers, they could transcend the immense pain and dedicate their suffering to the search for the Divine. God could ask no more. Bruckner could ask no less.

 

I always enjoy your reviews, some of the most entertaining on Amazon, but buying this performance is the first time I have been guided by one. I have only heard the first sonata so far, and you are quite right - the performers are wonderful - evidently enjoying themselves. Thank you. I think that early Mozart is the best Mozart if you want to be cheered up, and certain works, the Serenades and the marches and Dances for example show qualities that are not always on show in his better known works. My desert island Mozart would be the three small serenades K136-8 (though I am sure I would miss the later works terribly). Thanks again.

 

Bernard Michael O'Hanlon has great fun giving it a one-star kicking on this label and the previous one, and fair enough: I can see why one might hate it.

 

All this review is try to show off himself!! What an irony. IGNORE him. Also manages to insult Knappertsbusch and Australia in the process. Take this review down!

 

Thanks very much, Bernard. That is brilliant! I love the whole spiel , and am so nostalgic looking at the photo. I couldn't believe you had tracked her down after all those years, and a lovely affirmation as her career is winding down.  I can tell you she absolutely loves/loved teaching and I don't think she has forgotten anyone who has been part of her teaching life. Your recollections are so nice for me to read, as I was privy to all the after-hours studies and work preparations she always dedicated herself to. Thank you for such a quick and joyful response . . . I laughed when I received this email. No problem, Bernard ! It's done. She will be chuffed with everything you have put on paper.

 

 

I purchased this CD for completest reasons - I already had the Italian Grammofono version of this Fifth. But really I cannot begin to compete with the splendid review of the product by Bernard Michael O'Hanlon already on site. His use of the English language is exceptional.

 

Your review of the Jochum Bruckner 8 and 9 is superb. You have a rare ability among reviewers (not only on Amazon) to express your views with style and poetic grace.

 

My God, that Waldstein! He played it like a starving man who suddenly found a feast before him. It's an honor to listen to it. Thanks again, BMO'H

 

"......as evidenced by the first movement of the Pastoral, he's a master at letting music die away - or rather, run aground - on the wider resonance of the instrument at his command." Wonderful.

 

Impressive. I know enough about Beethoven's symphonies and Thomas & Friends to chuckle at how you constructed this parable, but I might not be picking up on the conductor references correctly. Can you tell me if I am - pun intended - off track? Perhaps Evil Herbert is Von Karajan, Otto the Ogre is Klemperer, and Barenreiter is Barenboim? I do not know who Mad Willy refers to, nor do I understand the Jeggy reference. Keep up the good work, and thanks in advance if you're willing to clarify for someone who is not as astute as your other readers.

 

Hello Bernard, a great review. Thielemann has never gotten my juices really flowing. The sad fact is, in my opinion, over the course of the last 50 to 60 years, with the growing excellence in the quality of orchestral playing, there has been a huge regression in the quality of conductors. in spite of all the publicity and the hype, THERE ARE NO GREAT CONDUCTORS ANYMORE, zilch, nada. They are a vanished species The examination of why this has happened would make a great PhD thesis. When I was a boy, I heard Walter, Monteux, Bohm, HvK, Ansermet, Schuricht, Jochum, von Matacic, and Leitner and they actually pushed me to begin to listen and to collect classical music recordings. Now I have scarcely any interest in the new, but treasure the old.

By the way, as your review is about the Bruckner 8th, do you know the 1949 recording of this work with Jochum and the Hamburg State Philharmonic. I have never been so moved by any other recording of the the sublime Adagio as I have been with this interpretation. Jochum takes 33 minutes for the Adagio and it is as though time is completely suspended and the world has stopped for the duration of the movement. Be well, my friend, and keep up the marvelous reviews.

 

Amazon's intercontinental brothers-in-arms O'Hanlon and Moore . . .

 

Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, the distinguished commentator Bernard Michael O' Hanlon from OZ had this one right...Its an exquisite recording, and cheap to boot.

 

Oh my, just listened the sublime Op 20 nº 5 in F minor with the Mosaiques. It's a revelation, unbelievable somber and majestic. Thanks! Love your reviews! Wonder if you have twitter, would be fantastic... Cheers from Brazil

 

Bernard, You made me relisten this set. That Haydn adagio of op 1 no 3 is really extraordinary.

 

Hey Bernard. I reviewed the Karajan in Moscow disc. Thanks again for sending it. I had a thrill listening to it!

 

Glad you wrote this review, B. I've been meaning to get to HvK's 1944 rec which you extol. Will do so soon.

 

Hello Bernard. ANTON BRUCKNER!!! I've completed my odyssey of "Herbie's Pyramid" (with a side trip to Karajan's 8th and 9th Sony DVD - excellent, thank you and others for recommending that) and what can I say other than FANTASTIC!

 

Thanks for another great review, Bernard. I suspect I have all of his recordings of these works now and would agree that the EMI is the most astounding.

 

Bernard, you are the one who is generous in sharing his love of Mozart on Amazon. I was just humbly reciprocating and am glad at least one of the quotes stroke a chord. There’s so little material on these great works around. 

 

Thank you for your review of the Grumiaux/Klien Mozart sonatas on Amazon. I’ve discovered the violin sonatas late in my Mozart quest but they are now spring of eternal youth. How they buttress and fortify in these calamitous times!  Below two marvellous quotes taken from the MusicWeb review of the Jess-Kropfitsch complete set:  “One and all, the enclosed world of the Violin Sonatas is vernal and in blossom, which is to say, they have no equivalent except in Nature. At each hearing, we may wonder whether the particular Sonata of the moment be not the most lovely creation, physically, in all music” (Sacheverell Sitwell, The Hunters and the Hunted, 1947). “Mozart’s sonatas for violin and piano represent a phenomenon as distinctive in music as Dante’s Paradiso in the field of literature” (Ezra Pound, Il Mare, July 1st, 1933). Cheers!

Marco

 

Once again the Oracle of Melbourne comes to my rescue. I have savored the earlier BA version of the Schubert since I was but a wee lad...never realizing (or somehow forgetting) that they redid them after Daniel Giulet retired and Isadore Cohen took over. I've rectified this, and will put them both through their paces, side by side. Many thanks, as always, for pointing this out. It always pays to read your reviews (and I can hear Amazon saying that right now...)

 

YES! IT’S TRUE! Finally the files sound rich and full. Not available on Amazon, but otherwise only as digital download, they have finally given these symphonies the sound they deserve. Bernard, I was looking in hope for this information last night when I stumbled across this note. I had a hunch you would come through and again I thank you. The Mozart symphonies and Tchaikovsky symphonies are also remastered- I’ve heard Mozart and there’s a definite difference in sound. It ain’t subtle - they took away the glare and the artificial reverb.

 

I just ran across this review. This is brilliant Bernard at his best!

 

To me the sharing going on here resembles the reading of reviews and what got me here in the first place, Bernard’s reviews on Amazon, without which I would have missed out on many artists and works that are now dear to me.

 

Bernard - Just revisited Haebler’s Philips K 545, the Andante, after reading your mail. It is indeed magical. She’s phrasing with the lengths of breaths, in harmony with the music and probably as it was intended. It sounds perfectly natural and unrestrained. The sonatas, as with much of Mozart is singing, the voice. Imagine critics called her prissy.

 

I recently got my hands on the VPO's 150th anniversary box set, and one of the gems in that set is the Kna Schubert 9.  Man, I can't stop listening to it!  I have to say, that's the single best Kna performance I've heard of anything.  I'm not a big Parsifal fan although I have his 1962 recording (and I know many feel that's the definitive performance of that work - which frankly I just don't get).  But the performance of S9 is just so alive, it breathes, and it's the most life-affirming performance of one of the most life-affirming of symphonies.  Have you heard it?

 

Just this morning I was looking on you tube for a Why do the nations, to listen to and found Mr Warfields rendition. I had never heard of it or of him, Id heard of Eileen Farrel, b I was really pleased  that fabulous voice. I looked on Amazon thinking of getting hold of the whole thing and read your review which I thought was great, I hope you dont mind but I ve shared on my fb page, I dont get many views and |i use fb page to keep stuff for myself. Anyhow great stuff very funny. The quote from Auden seems pretty applicable now.  Best wishes to you.

 

Hello,excuse me for bothering you: I just want to tell you thst you're the best Amazon classical music reviewer by far. Regards Nestor

 

Once again, as if it were ever in doubt, the guidance of the President of the Australian Knappertsbusch Association proves infallible in its wisdom and perspicacity; I refer you therefore, with due reverence, to Bernard Michael O’Hanlon’s review for everything you need to know about this disc which, in short, is a winner on every level, and left this listener in a state of grace, wonderment and abject humility at his first ever encounter with the perfection of K563. “Gun stuff” indeed!!!

 

But I must agree with the less-impressed reviewer, Mr. O'Hanlon, that this is strange Mozart, a throwback to earlier modes of interpretation, where everything is big and dramatic.

 

Wonderful review, Bernard. From reading it, a certain YouTuber could learn a thing or ten about style, content and how to approach our responses to the numinous. You convey more about the nature and human need for this music than a dozen of his rambling, pompous videos.

 

Among the top-ten priceless Amazon reviews. Well done.

 

I'm listening to this as I'm typing. How anyone can criticize Karajan's recording on any basis is beyond my comprehension. It's wonderful and so uplifting. And that I could love a work such as this from the classical era tells you how good the performance must be (and maybe it has something to do with the work itself too). Thanks for the great chuckle--this is another of your most memorable reviews.

 

"... rather be a human mattress at San Quentin than listen..."

Ouch! About the most vividly depraved metaphor I've read in... well, a long time. For enjoying it I intend to schedule an appointment with a shrink to work out some problems I did not even know I had. Thanks for the "heads-up."

 

Laughed out loud at your humor, Bernie--- man after my own heart! "Two overtures which Mozart sex-changed into symphonies..." Very funny. Thanks! (Just borrowed this set from my local library based on your review--- just to see if it is really "touched by distinction." I own the complete Mozart Symphonies with Pinnock and, well, don't find them overly interesting.) Looking forward to what Hogwood has to say.

 

Endless repeats? Seriously? You're in favor of cutting up Mozart's scores? You really are a nut, just like everybody says.

 

Just today I was wishing that I somehow had the power to get Bernard O'Hanlon banned (and all his posts erased) from Amazon.  He's a pestilential force, all on his own.

 

Hi Bernard. Thank you for another excellent, thoughtful review.

 

Very cool, Bernard. Happy to say the Chilingirians are in processing. Can hardly wait! Also ordered Einstein's Mozart for a penny on the dollar. My musical cup continues to runneth over. Thanks again for all your helpful advice!

 

I could not agree with you more, Bernard! This is one of the greatest Decca..London recordings in their entire catalogue. What a great maestro Kertesz was. This is Respighi with elegance and classical grace, rather than the usual razzle dazzle. I much prefer this to the celebrated Reiner versions of the two tone poems. Best wishes to you, as always, my friend.

 

Hi, Bernard. I recently read a rather technical review of Levin's book on K. 297b (Anh. C 14.01) [Richard Maunder, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 116, no. 1, pp. 136-139] and so am familiar with the arguments against the work being genuine Mozart. But I heartily agree with you when you say, "One only has to listen to the slow movement to understand that a Tier One Master is at work -- with a doctorate in woodwinds. If he was not Mozart, then he aced it on the day or was touched by the Hand of God." To my untrained ear, what you say of the slow movement is true of the others. I also agree with you that Levin's reconstruction on this CD is best ignored. Thanks for your review! – Dan

 

Thanks so much for recommending the recording of Abbado and the LSO in K 550 and K 551. I could not believe the power and drive in these two symphonies, one of the best recordings Abbado ever made, indeed it does not sound like his usual pedestrian self.

 

"As darkness befalls the Holy City, The dead walk among us." It is here now. Haydn heals. Your POV is thought-provoking and much appreciated in a largely brain-dead world.

 

By the way, Bernard, thanks for including my piffle anonymously in your latest review - I like that recording so much that I have paid over the odds and ordered it; it's stellar - really special. And you're right: the intonation is impeccable.

 

I’ve not heard these performances. I just wonder why Amazon allows a certain someone to constantly troll period informed performance with senseless self important verbiage... You know who you are!

 

Who are you (we?) talking about, me? Us? Best regards! (Bernard: Thanks for your review of Zuckerman/Neikrug's Mozart violin sonatas ... very, very fine indeed.)

 

You bet, Bernard. I'd consider your plagiarisation to be an honor! Wiedersehen! -J

 

In the past 2 weeks, for the first time I've listened to the string quartets (Chilingirians), quintets (Grumiaux) and now this. I must say hearing these masterpieces for the first time is quite thrilling to me! I think of yourself, Ralph, Kirk and all the other reviewers with taste to be my intrepid navigators guiding me past countless shipwrecks, pirates, stagnant marshes such as the Sea of Jeggy and putrid swamps (Sea of Norrington) and for that I am grateful!

 

With the review of another part of this set, you have just failed my plan to cut down on spending this month!

 

What lovely, deep sonority in this Borodin Quartet recording - and plenty of vibrato as appropriate to intensify the emotions - no scrawny strings. I'm sure the HIPster crowd will find this Romanticised and even I concede that it's hardly played in the spirit of Haydn's age but I love it. It's very slow, too - but this is the ultimate in contemplative, melancholy music, so it doesn't matter.  The recorded sound is superb, too. Ralph

 

 

I have no idea what I just read. But good on you for going off the beaten path.

 

Bernard, I too also have this disc. I have not listened to it in a long time though. You have inspired me to put it in today's rotation of music (along with Fischer's Hayden 52!). I wonder though, what's on Volume I? Stay safe Bernard.

 

Love this review, and was stirred by the sentiment of your first paragraph. Indeed, they don't call it the Eternal City for nothing.

 

I am a huge Bruckner fan, and after I saw an enthusiastic review of this item by Bernard Michael O'Hanlon, I was tempted to get it, since the download was just 3 dollars. Behold the Headless Wonder.......Bruckner's 8th, Karajan, 1944

 

Glad you wrote this review, B. I've been meaning to get to HvK's 1944 rec which you extol. Will do so soon.

 

Bernard, I do so agree with you about Haydn's Seven Last Words - it is his supreme masterpiece, his Goldbergs. It doesn't matter what form it takes - I favour the quartet but McCabe's piano version is superb, too - and it is funny how some of the greatest works transcend "the curse of variations" to become immortal.

 

Well, I bought a 2nd-hand copy of this just on the basis of the recommendation of that well-known trouncer of all things period, and of course, it’s as fizzy as the President of the Australian Knappertsbusch Association says. Haydn is the composer I go to for my mental health, and he doesn't disappoint here. (Despite the President’s brickbats for Hogwood, I confess to enjoying the late maestro’s Haydn recordings too - they are surely not as routine as the Herr President avers). S

 

"The Gozman 'Farewell' is one of the most profound musical experiences of my life. Thank you so much."

 

Bernard - A particularly helpful review. For years I've been looking for a version of the Nelson Mass fit to replace my worn LP of the old Mario Rossi version on Vanguard (with the incomparable Stich-Randall soaring into the heavens in the Kyrie). I've tried Bernstein, Wilcocks, Pinnock, and Weil (the latter two, HIP), but none are entirely satisfactory (Bernstein comes closest). I had not known, until I stumbled on this listing, that Davis had recorded the work. That, and your helpful review, has persuaded me to give this recording a try. Thanks as always for your perceptive reviews.

 

Hi Bernard - I finally got to the Sym. 34 you spoke so highly of...I can't believe how amazing it is! Thanks again for the review...I needed the kick in the pants to get to some of the discs I hadn't touched yet. Cheers!!!

 

Back from another round of medical dystopia to discover your review of this legendary Haydn set and I thank you for it; another great call. (I owned a number of the Odyssey Lps in the '60s but never even dared hope they would make it to CD.) IMHO you're dead wrong about Dorati, but who's to say we need to agree about anything except Goberman's magnificent achievement; I'm off to one-click Amazon to enter Haydn Heaven. Bravo, Bernard, (and pay no attention to the Handy-man behind the screen ... that wizard shall never find Kansas or anywhere else)!

 

This is a quite extraordinary performance - I have just heard it for the first time and I've been thrilled by it. I am clearly going to listen to it a lot. However, your comments on the Adagio reflect my own thoughts and concerns precisely.

 

“By the toil of others we are led into the presence of things which have been brought from darkness to light. We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all; and if we are prepared in the loftiness of mind to pass beyond the narrow confined of human weakness, there is a long period of time through which we can roam. We can argue with Bach, express doubt with Haydn, cultivate retirement with Mozart, overcome human nature with Beethoven and exceed its limits with Bruckner . . . why not turn from this brief and transient spell of time and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the past which is limitless and eternal and can be shared with better men than we.”

 

Dear Bernard, It is because of your reviews that I am a pauper, but at least the music is good. This is another one I've had to sent off for on the strength of your review. Best wishes, Stephen

 

Bernard, I don’t like going off-topic but following the news from Melbourne (“Where you slept last night is where you'll need to stay for the next six weeks") is highly disturbing. (I hope you were at home last night!) Besides offering empathy all I can do is use such spiritual powers as I possess to send Light to you, your family, and the whole population of Melbourne. If you can, please keep up your reviews (actually mini-essays). We need the insights and the humor.

 

Was it Divine Providence, or an accident of neurons meshing with the Cloud? But for some odd reason I thought to check the current Amazon listings for Walter Klien--a pianist I have always enjoyed, particularly in Mozart--aware that I had probably heard or owned all of his extant recordings. But, lo and behold, the existence of a Walter Klien collaboration with the Amadeus in two of my absolute favorite chamber works! And to top off the pleasantest of surprises, a rave review by B. M. O'Hanlon! What more could one ask for as Summer wanes in this hemisphere, and the academic year looms large! I hadn't a clue that Klien had ever recorded for DG (I knew he had collaborated with Grumiaux for the erstwhile Phillips label). Many thanks to you an the folks at the Knappertsbusch Association for unearthing this treasure! –JC

 

Clever review title Mr. O'Hanlon. I find your comparison between the '66 and '76 HVK B9 spot on and apt, but then I frequently find myself in agreement with your reviews (which I read regularly). Too, I acquired the Barenboim Berlin B9 on your recommendation and it's now in my personal top five picks

 

Bernard, I too was wondering about your health and safety during Melbourne's distress. I'm glad to see you are still setting off fireworks on the reviewing front. I assume there are no live concerts, as there aren't here. That does help keep the riff-raff among the audience away, but may be a step too far. I find myself listening to more recordings than ever before; it's a nice alternative to another trip to the supermarket to pick up the items I forgot in the last sortie. Thanks for keeping me on my toes about releases to add to the collection that is quickly taking over my dwelling, and those to keep a social distance and every other kind of distance from.

 

Hello and thanks for the excellent review. I always read your reviews when I see them, and they are all very thoughtful and entertaining.

 

When might you review the Fricsay 9th, Bernard? Seems like a recording that deserves the O'Hanlon treatment!

 

Hello Bernard - Mister Hurwitz is a dangerous man. His one-man drive to demythologise Bruckner, and have Karajan declared a heretic for daring to assert that there is an ineffable, suprarational reality beyond the notes, is one of the most insidious reductionist threats to the musical life of the twenty-first century. It's gladdening to read of you taking a stand against Hurwitz's attempts to deny the people their birthright - enduring access to great Bruckner performances.

 

would you believe I was sent the cheat sheet by my brother when I called on his good memory for help. I’ve also had the pleasure of reading your memoir.

Such honest observations so beautifully written. I wish I had have known you better back then, I would have helped you win that colouring competition for starters

 

I am breaking a cardinal rule writing to another Amazon commentator.

Beefeater martinis have destroyed my self-control and I am driven to acknowledge your recent influence on my long-held stances on old gods and the hold their music has had on my life. Specifically, your inclusion of Elvis in your comments on Thielemann's B8 was clearly a sign that I had to get closer. Long before that your tales of the 9 engines, Bash, Dash, Napoleon et all caught my fancy.  The fantasy of JEG and Captain Kurtz being crunched by KNA and the others was delightful to me. I am a hoary collector of Wagner and Verdi and see now that I have missed so much. I have ordered Mozart's K563 (Grumiaux) and the Tzimon Barto/Eschenbach Geistervariationen, in the hope that pure beauty will add 10 or 12 years to my life. Cheers! Jeffrey Sarver

(aka Pekinman)

 

I cannot match Bernard Michael O'Hanlon's expertise when writing about Kna in Bruckner but I thought it a good notion to provide a slightly more conventional way of expression so potential buyers are clear this is one of the greatest recordings ever.

 

First of all – comments are easy, using your review as a catalyst. They move on to generalised points that a review (a good one, that is) cannot, if the review’s points are to hit their target, which yours do with enviable frequency. You’ve encouraged me to buy a fair few discs over the years which otherwise would have passed me by and I suspect that goes for a number of classical buyers on Amazon.

 

Bernard, as a (relatively) "high-ranking" reviewer I am happy to proclaim that like many of your devoted readers I love your reviews because they are funny, inventive, well-informed and in my judgement dare to speak a truth which scandalises others. The low-ranking is, of course, the result of your persisting in reviewing things you dislike rather than just churning out vacuous five-star puffs. Only a dimwit would fail to spot that. You could, of course, save yourself some grief by abandoning your self-imposed crusade but that would deprive us of a lot of fun and you yourself don't seem to mind the attention it attracts from the Moral Majority.

 

BMO, thanks for prompting me to revisit Karajan's Bruckner 5. One word comes to mind: colossal!

 

Thanks for turning me on to this one...I appreciate it. I am listening to it through Totem Mani 2 speakers in my study...I would never have found this one if not for Amazon reviews.

 

Before I get into the performance, I'd like to quote Michael Tanner from a recent review of this symphony in BBC Music magazine: "When you finally 'get' the Fifth, as I think I have, it is so overwhelming that any adequate account of it has you reaching for superlatives." He's completely right.

 

Bernard, thank you for this review. I just posed mine. I would have never crossed paths with this exceptional performance were it not for your review, and I'm VERY grateful! As you would say: "Bang!"

 

Hi Bernard, yep, this Rattle is dull, not a goose bump in sight. Your reveiw begs the question (seriously, no sarcasm) which set have you got on your shelves? The last one I tried was Bareboim with his Divan, I think; anyway it certainly seemed sleepy and turgid to me. Generally speaking, I like the old guys and am not swayed by "HiFi". I await your recommendations. Ta! AD

 

Hi Mr. O'H. I just wanted to drop a comment here because I have now been listening to this and the other disc you recommended (with 88) for several weeks now. I am much in your debt. You don't hear this music played with this much joy-in-its-big-sound (there's probably a German word for that) as this. Even trad. orchestras, like my own hometown NYPO and Met Opera Orch play with reduced forces nowadays. Thanks again. The A major (87) is my new go-to music against the Gloom. Cheers!

 

Hello BMO: I just got this in the mail this morning. It's a very used copy so I played it right away to make sure it still worked. OH MY GOODNESS! This is just as wonderful as any Haydn I've heard in a very long time. I'm in total agreement with you that this is, indeed, great fun! Thanks.

 

"Period Practice Taliban." what a great review! Wonderfully written. And, yes, I happen to be a Leinsdorf admirer. I grew up with his Beethoven symphony cycle w BSO on RCA. Every one of those recordings still sounds to me -- despite all the "greater" performances -- excellent.

 

Hi Bernard, and thanks for the usual colorful review!

 

Bernard, just after I read your rave review, I had the luck to find the Aadland Haydn recording at an incredible low price. As for the performance I found it impressive on all accounts, and it now ranks as one my favourite Haydn cds. The D minor is outstanding no doubt, but the Mercury is especially close to my heart, the best reading of this symphony I have ever heard.Topnotch stuff. Thank you for getting me acquainted with it.

 

Bernard, thanks for another fine review, a reminder to renew my acquaintance with the Bruno Walter discs that are collecting dust on my shelves. I hope you got a friendlier price for Walter in Stockholm than the tag on Amazon here -- US$80! I loved the quote ("The harvest is past ... "). Had to Google it to find the source, Jeremiah. A dash of poetry here and there is one reason your reviews stand out.

 

You seem to be unusually blessed with uncles, Mr. O'Hanlon. Just casually browsing amazon's reviews, I found Uncle Karl (Bohm) and Uncle Claudio (Abbado). I'm fairly certain, your prodigiously talented family has a few more uncles to go around. I harbor the hope that there's Uncle Editor somewhere there to limit the propagation of your pompous and unsubstantiated negative reviews.

 

I love your reviews when someone else has thrown down the gauntlet and you fearlessly accept the challenge. Taking the 88, I've always felt that the movement was an aria without words, and Knappertsbusch's choice of tempo brings out this quality to perfection. (It would be like him to apply his knowledge of opera to the symphony and so create a fuller appreciation of the work.) I do enjoy (most) of Mister Hurwitz's videos, but shiver just a little when he claims to be plugged into the international critical consensus, one which, it appears, consigns Karajan to also-ran status in Bruckner. If that is how the global community of the self-appointed think, then I'm very happy to remain blissful and fulfilled in my provincial ignorance

 

So very clever, but so very wrong, so narrow minded

 

I have long been, and still remain, of two minds about Alfred Brendel. I always want to like him better than I do, and I always feel I must be missing the plot because I don't. Two stars is a bit harsh; but because it's my witty and astonishingly learned Antipodean friend at his most fearless and creative, I can't help but summon a wry smile in spite of myself and think, once again, that Bernard has got his finger exactly on the pulse of things.

 

Oh boy, I wasn't going to opine for fear of being raked over the coals, but since O'Hanlon mentioned it - Knappertsbusch VPO 1958, live has to be heard. It's the most earthy, clod-hopping, rustic, yes, cow manurey document of 88 I've ever heard. There's nothing like it. The VPO sounds like they are saying "what the hell is he doin", and yet they get totally into it. Surprising tempi, phrasing, you name it. I couldn't hardly believe how the finale started, initially thinking it's not going to work. But it magically does, and it just made me smile big time. Kna - he was one of a kind! Thank God!

 

What a surprise to hear from you, Bernard, and a WONDERFUL surprise! After 48yrs, surely I’m the last person you and your friends would be thinking of😜. Even though 1972 was my 2nd year out teaching, I certainly do still remember you, and Peter, Jimmy, Brian, Matthew and the gorgeous demure and gentle 6yr old Vicki! I’m very curious of course to hear how you made the connection with our son Chris?? I’ve been teaching at Our Lady of the Pines, Donvale for many years, (though now just doing emergency or relief teaching there) so I’m guessing that maybe one of you has contact with someone from there who knows me quite well to know that my maiden name was Teggelove?? Our Chris is turning 30 so not really your ‘vintage’ so to speak, unless it’s through Whitefriars old boys?? I’d be very interested to know what paths in life you have all taken since you were all such cute 6 year olds 👫👨‍👩‍👦‍👦Thanks so much for bothering to make contact after all these yrs, Bernard! Cheers to you all, Monica x

(Also, apologies for not replying to your previous message. In fact I only noticed it when I opened your message from last night.)

 

Bernard O’Hanlon

 

Well done O’Hie.

I just can’t explain how chuffed I was reading that.  Stirring stuff.

I would love to meet her again.

Thanks brother,

Sent from my iPhone, probably on the move.

Please excuse brevity and, particularly, spelling mistakes!

Regards, PTN.

 

Hi guys,

Lovely to re-acquaint as it has been a while – I’m bunkered down in Bendigo and going stir crazy!!!! Great investigative work Bernard, not bad for a Melbourne supporter ☹.

 

What an impressionable 6 year old I must have been  - Nice to hear, wish I had understood this important characteristic years ago as it could have taken me to higher places, hahaha Perhaps we can catch up soon over a beer, wine or soft drink….

Regards Victoria

 

B, Listening now to Tatrai in op. 64/2/adagio. What a stunning jewel-box of sparkling colors! Hard to choose between that and Norbert Brainin's searing violin piercing through the heart on the Amadeus set. And the Lindsays are masterful here as well. It's nice to have them all... Happy listening!

 

What a wonderful review! It's so well-written. As a novice listener to Mozart string quartets ( I happened to tune into an 'all Mozart' channel to catch the Orlando Quartet just as they were playing the Allegro from #593), I found your analysis to be illuminating and easy to grasp, even if I didn't catch some of the references.

 

Out of the mouths of knaves...Bravo! The first review by the renowned BO'H I've seen and not taken issue with. T

 

Vintage Bernard - Loved your humorous demolition of the wretched Zinman - whom, you will be aware, DH rates.

 

Hello Bernard, I am glad you gave this cycle such a bad review. I HATE this conductor with a passion. He has no taste. I am a great admirer of the music of Johann Christian Bach. Zinman totally botched the recording of the lovely Sinfonias Opus 6, 9, and 18 in his recording with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra on Philips. The tempi were taken sooo fast, that the music lost all its charm and character. Absolutely no taste or understanding of the music whatsoever. In the same set, the opus 3 Sinfonie were done by Neville Marriner which was an improvement of course, but, it seems that the older he became, the interpretations of Marriner became ever more glib and slick, thus losing some of the grandeur in this delightful music.

Thank you for giving a thumbs down to Zinman with such terrific, sarcastic humour!

 

Hey Bernard. I’m not too bad thanks. How about you?? Thanks for all your words about Craig too. Much appreciated.

I must say I’m glad Craig didn’t have to go through corona, and also that we didn’t have to have a funeral during it!

If the reunion kicks off I’m definitely in. Take care young  man.

 

I, for one, understand your reviews because to me, the demands that make of Mozart performance in paragraph 4 is not even exaggerated; it is right there in the music! So congratulations and thanks for validating my sorrow that these records stink.

 

Wonderful, insightful review. I'm unconvinced that one string instrument to a part works in his recordings of the concertos but he certainly loves the music. So I forgive him.

 

‎Craig Rice‎ to Bernard Michael O'Hanlon

July 26, 2018 ·

You’re a very old man. Happy birthday

You’re looking younger every year, mate, but your incisive wit and insight is as undimmed as ever. Keep up the good work and keep Melbourne standing for us

 

Happy birthday Bernard and may you have many more of them! Keep up those great reviews, always good to read!

 

HAHAHA, your usual elegance and delicacy! The later books are not my forte, as you might have guessed. The only stuff I read less than 2,000 years old are your reviews ;-) I'll google this one for cite and context.

 

Mr. O'Hanlon - I enjoy your reviews as much for their storytelling and humor as for their musical acumen, which is light-years beyond mine. Who is your first recommendation for the Prague symphony? My Bruno Walter version regurgitates garbled static when I burn it into itunes. I've enjoyed Bohm's version w/Berlin on a library copy, though I don't recall enjoying the other symphonies enough to buy the set...Many thanks, BB

 

Thanks, Bernard. I may go with the von K set, although it would involve some duplication, since I have his K201, K550 & K551 on an EMI recording w/Berlin.

I feel merely semi-literate reading your reviews and comments, but I thoroughly enjoy them, as edifying and entertaining as they are!

 

Hi Bernard

I am well and healthy, with thanks

These are very strange times though, very strange indeed Yes, that photo is from Emily’s (Jocelyn’s youngest) wedding. It was taken a couple of weeks before he died. Last set of photos I know of him. He had struggled a lot with an arthritis, and never really made the most of his time in Sydney to live well. Hope you are doing OK. Footy is about to start again, but it is the strangest feeling. Take care

 

Quoting from the review by the amazing philosopher and music critic, Bernard Michael O’Hanlon, is in order here .....

 

IMHO your review is spot on. Your top choices for this symphony transport the listener. Jochum in particular took the same orchestra to the stars. Chailly doesn't have enough thrust to leave the atmosphere.

 

Presumptuously, I would like to elaborate on a point you raise about Chailly - this has been my problem with nearly all his recordings. You say, eloquently, "Perhaps it testifies to the DNA of the Concertgebouw or Chailly’s lack of identification as an agonist in search of grace and consummation." I would say both of the above. He doesn't seem to be much of agonist in the first place.

Thanks again for the usually simultaneously erudite, insightful, and side-splitting reviews! 

 

Mr. O'Hanlon, thank you for your response. I will try and find the book by Simpson. I very much enjoy reading your reviews!

 

Every now and then, Bernard, you write a review that has me uncontrollably laughing. This is one such review. You made my day.

 

One of the many rhetorical tricks you employ so neatly is beautifully evidenced here: take an apt metaphor and develop it strikingly. Hole in one!

 

I must hear this. You're dead on, B, K. 563 is a true religious experience. And ONLY The Salzburg Kid could have written it.

 

Wonderful review. Btw, Peter Serkin's complete RCA recordings will be reissued this summer.

 

Thanks again for your many splendid reviews. With such heraldic shield you have won a new admirer: my little and playful grandson. Have a great day there in Melbourne.

 

Kitler!! My morning coffee just spewed out of my nostrils, thank you very much.

 

I don't know if I'm one of the "seasoned listeners" but I am one who responds to the majesty of this recording. I think I'll follow Bernard's advice and go and engage with it and a slug of single malt to facilitate transcendence. P.S. I did all I had planned to do and found this recording as wonderful as ever.

 

Loved reading your reviews.. keep 'em coming!

 

As always, a great review! Loved the reference to "Star Trekkin'"!!!

 

I like Giulini's VPO studio 8th.  It has a lot going for it (except for the choise of edition), although I think Herbie's versions (all of them) are better.  To CMG's credit, he does a great job with the 2nd movement just as Herbie does, and for the life of me I don't understand why almost everyone has a difficult time with that movement.  But the 1st movement in CMG's version does not work for me, it's too push/pull, which is ironic since Giulini tends to be the opposite of that.  The 3rd movement is unbelievable, which a very deep sense of spirituality.  The 4th movement is also very good, intensely tragic as I recall, but I don't think CMG does a particularly good job of the ending (which personally I think Bruckner botched and I don't buy it, it just feels tacked on and does not organically emerge from what precedes it; the only person who's ever made me think it may actually work is Herbie 1944, and you could not be more astute in your assessments of it, which have always been my lodestar).  I hate that CMG uses the Nowak version, and were it not for that, I would say this might be the recorded performance that comes closest to Herbie in the most meaningful ways and surpasses Herbie in spirituality.  I think with B7-9, CMG does good, very good, and then GREAT (I know you think otherwise - which is hard to imagine, because of everyone I know, er, knew in the AKA, I always thought your ears were better and more reliable than anyone's).  Giulini's live B7 from the same Vienna cycle of performances before the studio version was recorded is better than the studio version, more spontaneous, more intense, and without the self-consciousness I hear in the studio recording.  So overall, I'd say it's a very good performance of B8, but does not match let alone surpass Herbie.Ha ha, love it. Right now I'm checkin out Yudina, and I'm stunned!

 

Wonderful review, Bernard. Dangerously funny. One could laugh hard enough to fall off the chair (I almost did). For the record, I cannot stand Brendel's Liszt (the one for Philips anyway, the early sessions for Vox have their moments), and these video recordings easily rank among the worst memories of my unfortunate youth.

 

Bernard, "Furor Teutonicus" I like that. When it comes to turning a phrase, your imagination surely knows no bounds. Keep working, your reviews bring much pleasure.

 

Thank you. This is simply the greatest review of anything that I have ever had the pleasure to have read. I agree with you about Karajan's contributions as well. Bravo!

 

Oh I absolute HATE to, but just this once I have to agree with Mr. O'Hanlon. I could hardly bring myself to do it, but I actually clicked the "Helpful" button for this review. In all seriousness, Mr. O'Hanlon is spot on this time. This is grating, anemic violin scratching devoid of musical expression. I'd like to ask everyone involved with this recording, "What are you people doing?"

 

Loved the review - and have to say that this is easily my favorite of the "PP" recordings of these little masterpieces. Confess to giving the others away. (Does that make me evil also - poor unsuspecting blighters...)

 

This review is easily as inspired as the music on the CD, and far funnier. Thanks for the laughs! A shame about Claudio though...

 

Thank you for your comment, Huntley. I have always felt that Katchen was a very powerful pianist with a magisterial technique, His early demise due to cancer was an enormous loss to the musical world as was that of Ciani and Lipatti. By the way, when I lived in Italy years ago, I heard Ciani twice in two recitals, They were marvellous, he had it all! Better than Pollini for sure. Cordial regards from Colombia, S,A.

 

I cannot thank you enough for this review! Had this been an empty page I probably would have dismissed it as another of the myriad hazy, pirated Karajan recordings on offer. I am a relative Bruckner novice, but have a few favourite performances - Klemperer/WPO 5th, Karajan/BPO/DG 4th & 8th, Celi/MPO 3rd & 4th. I've yet to invest the time in the 9th (Giulini, Karajan, Abbado & Celi await on the shelf), as I feel I should understand the Bruckner canon more before embarking on that journey. Prior to finding this recording, the "autumnal" Karajan/WPO 7th & 8th stood supreme in my library. I always found Karajan's way with Bruckner "right", though I have yet to sift through the extant Kna and Fu recordings. After listening to this one, the "Apocalyptic" tag has never made more sense. It is heaven, hell fire, and utter transcendence captured in as vivid a recording as you could wish for. Superlatives fail to describe the pure rapture! Thank you again!

 

Well after staring at this on the shelf for the past month I finally allocated the time to give it a listen. I can only say that this is an astounding performance. I didn't do an A-B with HvK's later recordings (the ones I know are the EMI and the 2 DG's) but from memory this from 1944 has not been equalled. For me one of HvK's great strengths lies in his ability to sustain continuity- to tell a coherent story over a long time span well, I think he outdid himself in this performance. If only we had the first movement! My thanks to both you and Ralph for bringing this to our attention.

 

I'm not a big fan of Karajan's way with Bruckner, but his conducting of the coda of the finale is completely indescribable. Those 3 or so minutes seem almost superhuman to me.

 

WOW just a great sense of active imagination. I have the Barenboim/Paris, I agree , the soloists are what saves the day along with a powerful chorus. Listening as I type. Its above averge, Bohm/Vienna/DG as 1st, Guilini maybe 2nd, and Barenboim 3rd. I can't stand anything from Levine nor Ozawa.

what is unforgivable with Barenboim is his Mozart PC's as pianist and conductor AT THE SAME TIME. How is this possible and expect great results????

 

Bernard, in the art of saying things without mentioning them, you beat us all. My compliments!

 

Perhaps your best review ever, Bernard. I've come back to read it repeatedly. Well said.

 

What a great description in this review!

 

Just finished reading your Whitefriars - The Secret History.

Fantastic ! I myself was a year above you, starting in 7b in 1977 , hiding under Mrs Healy's wing. I grew up in Eltham, so was part of the group that carpooled from Doncaster Shopping Town. The famous bus d32, with the MacClelland bros and the Peperkamp bros on board every day. Your recollections are incredibly accurate. I have been having a good laugh the whole way through. Thankyou for your time and effort. Events that spring to mind ;

 

Hey man - great review...your stuff has been top notch of late, one of very few things I look forward to these dark days.

 

Your reviews have been a near constant source of pleasure and your recommendations - as well as Ralph’s - have been guiding my purchases and/or streaming listening for almost two years now. And the comments are often as interesting as the reviews themselves. Naturally I disagree with some assessments, but your Mozart and Beethoven recommendations are nearly always on the mark (though I do glean real pleasure from Arrau’s sonatas and what I hear as their gravitas). Please continue in your work! And thanks again for the ongoing reviews.

I was rather amused to note that your reviewer ranking seems to have jumped from #54 million to #191,000 recently.

 

 

Bernard, I'm going to have to stop reading your lousy reviews; every time I do I get so enthused and excited to hear what you hear that I darn well buy it....

meanwhile I've consoled myself with Klien and Pires... I agree! Excellent review. We have to pay attention to his private life because so much background is available and it matters. Mitsuko is, as usual, a master at channeling Amadeus' apparent intentions so skillfully.

 

 

I really do need to thank you for this heads-up, Bernard. One of my best buys ever. I'm somewhat discouraged that so many of the artists I most love (Zacharias, Katsaris, et. al.) have been, at least here in the USA, pushed WAY to the back of the bus in favor of Beautiful Youth. Has no one ever heard youth is wasted on the young? Don't get me wrong, I find Khatia, Sara, Yuja, and all the rest as hot as any other red-blooded hetero (I would even pay extra to sit close enough to get a better view of Khatia's derriere), and I do not deny they are talented, but promoting them at the expense of middle-aged strange-looking dudes of questionable orientation is slowly killing The Music. Just as with the curly perm conductors. Which reminds me, I may as well thank you here for the heads-up on another gorgeous set, the Suitner Salzburg Kid late symphonies. Unlike the Fifi-heads, Otmar never looked like he could have pulled off sharing a poster with David Cassidy, but Mozart obviously stood tall in his heart. Sublime

 

 

What a lovely, urbane review; I am always pleased when another reviewer shares my love of this set. I met David Rendall when he was singing Rossini's Almaviva in Johannesburg and have long enjoyed his distinctive tenor, especially here. My favourite moment in this recording is the toast quartet "E nel tuo, nel mio bicchiero..." just before the thunderbolt in the last scene.

 

 

Splendid analogies here, Bernard - your review makes me want to hear this asap. Why would anyone settle for some of the milksop offerings we've had of late when you could hear this?

 

Anyway, thanks again for the Giovanni recommendation. I've loved Leinsdorf's 'Cosi' for years and can't believe I've passed over the other Da Pontes ... leave it to my Australian buddy to set things aright! Toodles from Trumpland ... Please pass on to your PM that we're not boors this side of the Great Pond!

 

Thank you for the outstanding and balanced review. Makes me want to check out this recording. I admire Karajan but, like you, am knowledgeable enough not to apply indiscriminate adoration like his many f

 

Hello Bernard, This is the best review of yours I've read. It does exactly what an enthusiastic review should do, it makes me want to listen to this. And it further deepens my interest in K. And, re Gunnamatta: Be careful out there. Stephen, I had exactly the same reaction. Well done, Bernard!

 

Another evocative, inspiring, and thoughtful review, BMO. I concur fully re: Celi's version. Although that one is sonically superior, I also enjoy Tennestedt/LPO.

 

Bernard - this recording will always hold a special place as one of my earliest Bruckner experiences. But now that I have ventured to where the wild things roam with Karajan/BPO ‘71, there is no going back!

 

Bravo, indeed; I love it when your Muse has been roused, refreshed and pointed in another direction - in this case, the Heart of Darkness. QF, I think Bernard is commenting briefly on the sonics but in code via his observations regarding thinness of script.

 

 

Dear Bernard, thank you so very much for your reviews. I have stumbled upon them only a couple of days ago, searching for the best version of Mozart piano concerti. Let me just say that I enjoy reading your reviews as they are wonderfully written and they give me a chance to learn more about music, where I am used to only follow my inner feelings. So, thank you very much again!

 

Thank you for the review and for the polemic insights. I just listened to the Weller Quartet version - 'prettifying' is a good word for their approach

 

I don't know if I am capable of hearing the ultimate shortcoming in Uchida's playing that you so eloquently describe, but you seem genuine to me. I'll get this CD as a challenge. Thanks so much for your time and your thoughtful review.

 

Brilliant. I've managed to figure out that you've reviewed all the Dorati/Haydn box sets (I'm a bit slow, but eventually I cotton on). They're sending me back to Haydn symphonies that I haven't listened to in ages, so many thanks for taking the time to write such lively and perceptive comments!

 

O´Hanlon is cool, sheer Aussie freshness

 

I too am glad you've written so much on the Dorati series, even if I disagree with certain bits; that doesn't change for one minute the value of your perceptiveness. (My spell-check just informed me that "perceptivity" is not in fact a word; so I learned something else today!)

 

Excellent review. I was fortunate enough to find a near mint copy of this in a vinyl box set for 50 cents. Audio quality is superb which is what this excellent performance deserves.

 

What a fantastic review! What opulent prose!

 

Well, I am actually listening to this box set as I read this wonderful review and the appropriately armoured comments.

 

Yes, Bernard, I saw your review and I'm glad you like the Strauss disc. - I know very few of Karajan's home videos. It is about time for a complete re-issue box set on Bluray. I would love to see for example the Alpensinfonie. Please keep writing your reviews here on Amazon - they are a constant source of inspiration and always fun to read! I purchased numerous discs (and re-listened to many I already had in my collection) based on your comments. Here just one example: The Mozart piano concerto box with Zacharias. I hardly knew many of the concertos and listening to them is now a constant source of insight and delight. I also bought the excellent Girdlestone guide book (again your recommendation). Surprisingly often we seem to agree on the merits of recordings.

 

Congrats on a world class venomous review, MaD BOB. First Schumann's G minor trio isn't objectively "droopy",though you may think it so er try the Beau Arts version). As to the Frieburgers performance -granted on "period ' string instruments; vibrato will be diminished. But you are unkind, the performances are very enjoyable especially in their harmonics. Is this ultimately the "right" (Hegelian) instrumental balance for Schumann? debatable in a technical way but these are fine engaging performances if approached without aural prejudice.

Ropy

 

"The United Nations Commission of Pomposity and Elitism in the Arts has published its conclusions. Nothing of major technical significance -- such matters as instrumentarium, harmonic theory, skill at counterpoint -- distinguishes these close contemporaries. (von Suppé 1819-1895; Bruckner 1824-1896) Bruckner's symphonic works do have a temporal amplitude far more challenging to the average audience's circulatory comfort, but those works can easily be disarticulated in ouverture-sized outbursts not much more spacious than von Supp's honestly labeled ouvertures. There is some anecdotal evidence that bridge and canasta players find it easier to maintain their élan vital when von Suppé is piped into their senior center lounges than when Bruckner is. The UNCPEA therefore concludes that the sole distinguishing characteristics of the two composers'oeuvres is that most living humans enjoy von Suppé's music far more than Bruckner's. The next step in the Commission's investigation with be to consider whether a resolution should be submitted to the General Assembly condemning Brucknerism and Brucknerites for crimes of gnatzi pretentiousness."

 

Thanks for the heads-up. And I still owe you for HvK's 1944 Bruckner 8; it was the performance that finally made sense. I've been collecting B8s ever since, but in my short experience, only Karajan's own remakes get within a mile of whatever exactly it is that he conjured back in '44.

 

Bernard, just after I read your rave review, I had the luck to find the Aadland Haydn recording at an incredible low price ( here is the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Haydn-Symphonies/dp/B000024K3A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1379290646&sr=8-2&keywords=haydn+aadland ). As for the performance I found it impressive on all accounts, and it now ranks as one my favourite Haydn cds. The D minor is outstanding no doubt, but the Mercury is especially close to my heart, the best reading of this symphony I have ever heard. Topnotch stuff. Thank you for getting me acquainted with it.

 

Hi Bernard, and thanks for the usual colorful review! But your review of the Yamagata Sym. versions brought those to my attention as well, and those rival the best-thanks! Jeff

 

I've been a devoted fan of the KV 334 since my early juvenescence and did not know about this quote by Einstein. Thank you very much.

 

Like Cairns' treatise, your review is a pleasure to read. I am now persuaded to get his book and to wander around this website to enjoy some more of your piquant prose.

 

I must admit, that was the most creative and witty review I've ever read on a piece of music (or a complete recording) on Amazon. As many other reviewers have stated though, if you're going to have a piano recording of these marvelous works, it had better be a GREAT one. This 1980's Schiff version is a benchmark, and his newer recording is phenomenal and brilliant. There is actually a new Chinese recording out by Yuan Sheng which I play here on Youtube almost every morning to wake up!

 

Hi Bernard.

I wanted to thank you for reviewing classical recordings on Amazon. They’ve been an invaluable source of insight and guidance on Amazon.co.uk over the past few years. I regularly attend BBC National Orchestra of Wales concerts here in north-west Wales and the occasional LPO concert; also the Welsh National Opera in Llandudno. Had the good fortune to attend Bruckner 5 & 7 at Manchester’s Bridgwater Hall with the BBC Philharmonic last year. Simone Young was guest conductor for Bruckner 5, which was probably the most intense musical experience of my life. I would never have attended these Bruckner concerts had it not been for your reviews and your love of Bruckner, Bernard; and I can honestly say that I’ve been more than happy with the classical purchases I’ve made on the strength of your recommendations. Currently, I’m exploring Wagner with Bryan Magee’s Wagner and Philosophy.

ps. It’s unfortunate that J Robson is attempting to curtail your review activity on Amazon. If you were discussing classical on FB only (as Jeremy wants you to), I wouldn’t have received the wisdom. The ‘verified purchase’ issue which the pig-headed one harps on about is a red herring. I’d advise you not to reply to narcissism – not one word.

I’ll look forward to reading more reviews.  Best wishes, Karl

 

 

I really do need to thank you for this heads-up, Bernard. One of my best buys ever.

I'm somewhat discouraged that so many of the artists I most love (Zacharias, Katsaris, et. al.) have been, at least here in the USA, pushed WAY to the back of the bus in favor of Beautiful Youth. Has no one ever heard youth is wasted on the young? Don't get me wrong, I find Khatia, Sara, Yuja, and all the rest as hot as any other red-blooded hetero (I would even pay extra to sit close enough to get a better view of Khatia's derriere), and I do not deny they are talented, but promoting them at the expense of middle-aged strange-looking dudes of questionable orientation is slowly killing The Music. Just as with the curly perm conductors. Which reminds me, I may as well thank you here for the heads-up on another gorgeous set, the Suitner Salzburg Kid late symphonies. Unlike the Fifi-heads, Otmar never looked like he could have pulled off sharing a poster with David Cassidy, but Mozart obviously stood tall in his heart. Sublime.

 

 

Thanks to you both. I did find this recently in the MHS variant. Agree with your comment abou the packaging, but no matter. Bernard, the renditions are as divine as you claimed. Thanks for the "steer" on this one.

 

Oh Em Gee! A semi-certifiable review from the king of digressive meandering with which I agree. I received this cycle box quite late in the game but must admit Lubimov and his choice of listenable klangachords combined with sublime, tasteful playing has me loving the cycle more than ever. Kudos to the factitious poet of Amazon reviews!

 

 

Over the past two days I have been systematically searching for and reading all of your denunciations of Abbado. It has been a treat. Keep up the good fight

 

I worked in HMV classical departments for ten years or so, and one thing I do miss is the talk about music with colleagues and customers. I've been reading Bernard's reviews (amongst a few others) on here for a couple of years, and realise it was an attempt to recapture some of the good old days. From what I've seen, you're all delightfully obsessed with music and generous with sharing your enthusiasm. And as for the trolls, well, they're rather shy of the daylight, it would seem.

 

 

Bernard Michael O'Hanlon may be a maniac, but I agree with his opinion on Herbie's 104 (if not his thought on Thomas Fey)

 

Might as well give it up Bernard. You’ll never be a Mahler man. It takes a special ‘crazy’ to appreciate Mahler. About this particular recording… I once had this in my LP collection decades ago. Was not impressed. Seems that Kubelik in his survey of the symphonies took the ‘safe’ route, the kind that many other Mahler interpreters have taken (I had mentioned this in a previous post). As to Herbies version, I had bought this right after his release of the 5th; an awesome version to be sure. The 6th was to me a thud. My preferred version is the Solti/Chicago Symphony recording.

Stay safe Bernard.

 

I have followed Bernard for years, and I have told him, he deserves to be in the top 100, but the public do not get his different approach to reviewing.

 

 

I'm sorry Mr. Robson, but I am very much my own man, and squarely English to boot. Look me up on Facebook - Rodney Vincent John Kralik. Send me a friend request, and you'll be able to peruse at leisure my decade-old profile. Meticulous as his reviews may be, I doubt even Mr. O'Hanlon gave such forethought to the day he'd have to contend with some of the wild accusations he has thrown his way on here. By the way, I do have the odd review or two on Amazon, but not of classical music. Look up Tadlow Music's release of 'El Cid' on Amazon.co.kjkuuk. Oh, and if you're still in the mood to wish people short lives at the hands of life's shadowside, don't bother. I already have cancer and it's tried its best, thus far to no avail. (With that, I commend you to God.)

 

My pleasure. Over the years, you've put me onto quite a few discs I'd have otherwise missed out on, the most precious being the Bolet live at Carnegie. (Your review coincided with it being only a fiver.) I look forward to the reviews of your latest haul. (And yes, now that I'm fifty, I too ponder the post-mortem fate of my collection. I have a friend, twenty-years younger, who has yet to embrace Bruckner, so that will take care of a few hundred titles. The rest, I commend to God.) Every strength to you, sir.

 

Wonderful review, Bernard, though I'll give the BBQ a skip. Radiant is the word for the symphony and also for Jochum's splendid interpretation. His EMI version, from Dresden, is arguably even finer. There is an even more palpable sense of transcendence in I and II, and the reading is, overall is ineffably wise. But the DG version is also splendid. For the 1872 version, I favor Inbal these days. –JC

 

Meanwhile, I enjoyed revisiting this review which so neatly conveys the allure of Kna's Bruckner - and thank you for introducing me to him as a Brucknerian, as I might otherwise have overlooked his special gifts there.

 

But my dogs developed an unfortunate appetite for anyone who carries a Jiffy bag and my postman finds solace by spreading outlandish rumours. Incidentally your review of Norrington's Bruckner was satirically brilliant it had me and my kids in stitches.

 

I laughed out loud at this one. You have outdone yourself, Bernie! Too late have I known thee, Kna of the Apocalypse!

 

Dear Bernard, Just a very quick email to send you & yours my warmest greetings and very best wishes at this time of uncertainty and anxiety. I hope you’ve been unaffected by the virus, & will continue to be so. Stay healthy, stay strong and keep those HIPster Wars communiques coming - the Amazonian world is counting on you!

Kindest regards, James

 

Hello Bernard,

As always deepest thanks for your splendid and humourous reviews. I have spent several thousand $$$$$ purchasing items that you have highly recommended and not one has been a turkey. When it comes to Bruckner, you and Jeffrey Lipscomb of Fanfare 20 years ago are the greatest reviewers of Bruckner. I purchased the recording of the 2nd Symphony by Eric Schmid and find it to be marvellous in all respects. The Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra of 1965 may not be the Vienna or Berlin Philharmonics of that time, BUT the sonority of this German orchestra is to my ear exactly correct for Bruckner. I have not liked too much the 2nd of Bruckner until I heard this one, and all of a sudden everything clicked. With discreet use of tone controls the sound can be made to be very good, eliminating some of the stridency at climaxes. Thank you again, Bernard, for this amazing discovery!

By the way the oboist in the Ristenpart recording of KV, 251 is Jacques Chambon, a famous French oboist of that period. Another marvellous recording of K. 251 is the Pablo Casals recording with the Perpignan Festival Orchestra from approximately 1952 with the VERY famous oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra for more than 40 years, Marcel Tabuteau.

Best wishes from Colombia, S.A. and keep up the great work.

Sincerely, John DeLonge AKA Fuente Clara

 

Thank you so much for steering me to the recording. I trusted your musical opinion and I've been rewarded by an amazing experience. Thanks and best wishes Chris

 

'Bout time to give Callas's Bolena a chance, eh? Love to read your views on the subject. Your immersion in Toscatude has been rewarding.

 

Bernard, I have long admired your writing style, as well as your judgment. Any review you submit is an event. I haven't heard this recording, so I can't comment on it. But almost everything directed by Dausgaard bores me. I now disregaard him.

 

Well done, Bernard! Style and substance perfectly matched. Pope (Alexander) would be proud of you.

 

' Any outburst above mezzo-forte is treated as an opportunity to broadcast the existence of mankind into the far reaches of space....I may never recover from this.' These days we all need a good laugh--many thanks!

 

This is such a lovely review.

 

I am a bit late to the game, but I loved the review. Thanks.

 

Almost no idea what the hell this review's going on about, but the first few lines read so poetically that I couldn't not buy the disc. So, well done!

 

Beautifully written Boo. You have an extraordinary talent!

 

Bernie, I've never read a more elegant, eloquent tribute... You have really captured  Ricey in thoughtful, funny and unexpected ways. They were great times, weren't they? We had so much fun...  a beautiful piece of writing....

 

Bernie, Fantastic tribute to Ricey whilst allowing us all the opportunity to stroll down memory lane and relive the good times we spent together at Maccas.

Am sure he would be proud of his good mate’s penmanship

 

Mr O'Hanlon's review of the Rattle Berlin Beethoven cycle is one of the best I have read. Thank you Mr O'Hanlon. Indeed 'Uncle' Otto would have wiped his shoes on this Rattle contrived, misconceived Beethoven. I know some of Otto's tempi are rather slow sometimes but, my God, he did understand that trenchant Beethoven 'earthiness

 

I think your prose is not only enormously more elaborate than mine, but

also the product of a much more poetic mind, and you seem to listen to everything. When I write my slutty reviews for the BBC Music Mag. I always look on amazon and find you've already written your eloquent piece, which I normally agree with.  That''s  why I took it for granted that you would have reviewed the ostensibly important Kna box.

Have you got the DG Furtwaengler 'compplete' box?  It has the most scandalous   article by Norman Lebrechet, more muck-raking even than usual.  I saw a paperback  of his |THe Maestro Myth recently, and was delighted to see my TLS review quoted on the cover;'' This may be the most disgusting book I have ever read.'' Enjoy Xmas, a season I loathe. With warmest  wishes, Michael 

 

Love your reviews BTW, even when you bash recordings that I love!

 

 

 

Hello - I very much enjoy reading your CD reviews. I am a writer on music (CD and programme notes, etc) and was a viola-player in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for over 30 years. As a writer I wish I had your imagination, but anyway -keep up the entertainment. I don't mean to imply that that is the only enjoyable aspect of your reviews. Of course they are very informed - and I usually agree with your opinions! I think I know how to access more of your reviews but if there was a source where they are all collected I should be glad to hear of it.

 

Having finished cackling at your demolition of Cecilia's latest farrago of nonsense, I needed the repose and consolation of these lovely pieces so I turned to Herbie and co on holiday in the Alps. Bliss.

 

I love the way in which you write your comments, Bernard. Really entertaining, but also informative. Thanks.

 

So great you're doing a review of the second Tosca, Bernard. I have a greater affection for it than the first for some reason, I'm not quite sure why. I had a bit of an epiphany listening to it some years back: it struck me how determined and careful she is to Sing Beautifully - to be "on form", not to make ugly sounds. Or at least that's how it seems to me. In other words, the drama at one level is about her as an artist, her relationship with her own voice. Probably for the final time with this recording, it's a battle she wins.

 

Love your Puccini reviews! But when will you review Butterfly and Turandot? :)

 

Wow, Bernard. This may be one of your best reviews. One of the great recordings of the century that actually lives up to the hype. Glad to see you expanding your listening horizons as the years pass!

 

This review by M O'H, is brilliant. We need more like these. Despite his coruscations, I might listen to the Ticciati. But he, Ticcers, has a lot to live up to, and it seems he hasn't.

 

Absolutely brilliant review. Unfortunately I bought this last Saturday (14/7/18) and have only listened to 1 + 2 so far which come up rather short against my Giulini 1981 recording. (The very first cd I ever bought in 1983; Symphony Nr.2). Los Angeles Philharmonic joyous. To be enjoyed with Chivas Regal Royal Salute.

 

A brilliant review, Bernard. Whenever I read about something as dispiriting as set, I reach for my Klemperer recordings. Heck, from your characterization, this Ticciati guy makes Zubin Mehta seem like Furtwangler.

 

Bernie

 

Thanks for your fabulous email.

It gave me a smile in such a terribly sad time.

 

We had such great times at McDonalds- I know my friends could never understand why we all enjoyed working there so much. A testament to that was the great turnout of the ‘Macca Family’ to pay their respect to Craig- I was so thrilled to see everyone come to honour Craig

 

He was so lucky to have had 51 years of great living- success at school, an enormous career but most importantly a loving partner and fabulous children. Manu people live for 80 years and never experience that

 

I too will greatly miss his wise council

 

Bernie- best wishes to you

Edwina

 

Sent from my iPhone

 

 

On 13 Dec 2019, at 1:16 pm, Bernard O'hanlon <Bernard.O'hanlon@optus.com.au> wrote:

 

 

________________________________________

 

Dear Edwina.

 

I hope that you don’t mind me writing to you. The last two times we’ve met, you’ve been so sad and desolate. For that, I’m so sorry.  We should break that cycle.

 

Re your famous and much-loved brother. I have a recurring entry in my calendar for January 7th – he had the same for the 25th of July. I am not going to remove it.

 

I am so annoyed at myself for taking him for granted. You never did. I’ve already been to Mass for the repose of Craig’s soul. I’ve been thinking about him constantly since the news come through. The other day I listened to Brahms’ German Requiem in the car; I broke down in tears. As a brother, I loved him. And of course, to love Rice meant that one wanted to GET him!!!

 

You know this too!

 

At such times, one has to defer to stories for the rest, assuredly, is not silence.

 

When we first met at Maccas in 1986 Craig was everything that I wasn’t – and vice versa (I could always beat Craig in Trivial Pursuit in terms of History and Literature). He never said anything bad about anyone – not even Michael Rowe who was determined never to promote him to manager. However stratospheric his later career was, he always retained the common-touch. And as you know, we all had such fun at Doncaster McDonalds – and Craig was more cardinal to that dynamic than anyone. We worked together so often. Being the competitive beast that he was, he was never happy that I was anointed as a manager. Even so, we fronted up most Friday and Saturday nights together – especially on the Hot Trax Nights. Oh, to be so young and free again!

The one time I street-raced was in 1990: I was in my Datsun Stanza. I was up against Ricey in his Astra, coming off the Eastern Freeway and onto Alexandra Parade in a race to the University. It was a beyond-stupid decision by both of us. And I beat the bugger, albeit by the barest of margins.

 

His 21st birthday was a fiasco. I can still see those banners (sheets) emblazoned with “Virgil.” There was also a water fight on the night where luckily no-one broke their necks on the slippery concrete.

 

Remember all those endless card games where he progressively pulverised Peter Keily, the Mernaghs and Amanda into submission. The Red Astra ensued. I was smart enough to avoid this entrapment. I wish I knew what happened to the famous Chariot of the Gods.

 

To a final point. This might cheer you up. I wanted to say this to you at the funeral but discretion won the day. Back in 1989 – so long ago, the Garden - I had a moment of grace. It occurred at Dom Gregory’s 21st. We were in the backyard. There was some sort of bonfire which added luminescence to proceedings. I beheld a woman there. She wore a black dress. I thought to myself: that is a Mozart-like perfection. I can still see it in my mind’s eye, battered though I be. To quote Shakespeare, Edwina, “But thy eternal summer shall not fade.”

 

If word comes through as to what caused Ricey’s death, please pass it on. I want to understand what happened. If you’re ever in the city with 30 minutes for a coffee, let me know too.

 

It’s so hard to think of a world without Ricey. I miss him dearly and will do so until my own day of reckoning

 

Just look at the reviews for any recording by Gardiner or Norrington: almost invariably you'll find a disparaging review by this fellow, who refers to the two conductors as "Jeggy" and "Sir Woger" respectively. He's like their personal cyber-stalker. As André said, his reviews are usually fun to read, quite literate and witty (if in a pompously self-conscious way), but after a while you start to wonder: does this guy ever listen to anything he LIKES?

 

Here is "O'Hanlon's" review for the Fourth Symphony, or is it the result of an arachnoid brain tumor?  The first paragraph might be of interest to a psychiatrist:

 

Truth is, the guy IS funny to read, which makes his reviews all the more insidious. At least Hurwitz prominently displays his vitriolic rants under the banner « cd from hell », and we know it often signals an interesting recording

 

Wonderful review. A friend who's cleaning his basement gave me the whole set. I believe you. And I love the term jeggy. First time seeing that. I bet I loathe him as much as you do. What a putz.

 

Bernard, how dare you call ol' Gustav a minor composer ;-). Oh Bernard, you have fallen for "safe" Mahler. I used to have Haitink's recordings of the Mahler cycle, and he, like many other so-called Mahler conductors went the safe route to make Gustav more palatable. The only two I would call great interpretations of the 1st are Solti's and Walters. (PS - I would have reacted to your previous reviews but I was banned for some unknown reason a couple of years ago. I finally got reinstated a while back). For the most part I enjoy your reviews. Keep up the good work :-).

 

 

Hello Bernard, Many thanks for your prompt and helpful reply.   I agree wholeheartedly about the wartime  2 and 3, especially 3, which may even  surpass Furtwaengler - no, I can't say that, they're different.  But why haven't you - unique authority  - written about the Profil set, which if it weren't partly fraudulent would be important?  You of course have the surprising-arriving Act 3 of Tristan? - I wish I could bear  Lorenz. I once stood next to Kna in a cheque-out queue in Bayreuth in 1962,  I was of course too nervous to speak to him, but it was the only time  I saw him, as opposed to hearing him in 3 Parsifals and 1 Meistersinger.

With best wishes,

Michael   

 

Oh, how beautifully written! "The composer touches the hem of His garment." I wish I could write like that...

 

I read you avidly on amazon, as I'm sure many people do, and have a high rate of  agreement, especially over   Bruckner releases.  What I rather urgently want to know is whether that Profil boxed set of Brahms symphonies is as largely bogus as I think it is, and not only from consulting John Hunt's discography. would be very grateful for an answer, however brief.   I'm surprised that after over a year no-one has reviewed it.

With best wishes,

Michael Tanner 

 

Mutton masquerading     as lamb - The Queen of the Night's asthmatic struggles attributable to an iron lung? The master at work.

 

Inscribe it on your wanger? Yes, well enquiries at my local tattooist resulted in a black eye for yours truly, so thank you very much for that. I had more luck at BodyArt by Gerald, a more broad-minded establishment in Caernarfon. Alas, disappointment ensued as Yannick Nezet – Seguin was wrongly spelled and in any case for some reason it’s changed to YnikNezSin. She of boundless perspicacity, Mrs Ensign, took one look and said ‘You’ve been reading that bloody O’Hanlon again haven’t you?’

 

Hi Bernard!

Be careful of the Callas crowd - they seem to think everything she sang was the best, and by far.  Laughed out loud at your review of the dreadful Magic Flute. Always a joy reading your reviews, but doubly so when you get to trot out the heavy guns!

 

You are Smaug the Uber-Gilded, Guardian of All That Matters, the Unsleeping, the Ever-Watchful, the As-Yet-and-N'er-To-Be-Opposed, the All-Concupiscent Supremacy, He-Who-Has-It-All.  How may I serve thee?

 

Bernard, have you heard Brautigam in this repertoire? Enjoy your reviews!

 

It's small stuff after all your reviews, which got me to see why Mozart is so great and deepened my love of Bruckner.  And led me to one extravagance after another, none of which have been regretted for even a moment. 🙂

 

Thanks again for the usually simultaneously erudite, insightful, and side-splitting reviews!

 

Nice review. I share your passion for Furtwängler 1943, but unlike you my reference is the Kleiber 1980 on DG. Kleiber's conception of this symphony matched Furtwängler in intensity, and he also exacted much better execution from the VPO. The digital sound is not the best but is still miles ahead of 1943.

 

Great review B as are all of yours of course...just asking if I may: Is there any applause before or AFTER this performance?? I've read all the reviews here including the default editorial - no info concerning this.

Thx for your time.So congratulations and thanks for validating my sorrow that these records stink

 

Quinton Fox5 years ago (Edited)Report abuse

"I AM NOT an expert on Classical Music which I enjoy. However, I learn so much from [Bernard's] review." Btw. I yesterday listened to the remastered version of K 334 in the Karajan 1960 box, and "washy sound" no more, beyond the clearest of consommés. Your "model of sophistication" hits the nail on the head. As far as I am concerned Herbie's Mozart Kingdom can be expanded beyond K 425. Cheers!

 

Even by your standards, my dear Bernard, this is a fantastic review.

 

O’Hanlon and Haverstock are like the two complementary requirements of a rifle squad on patrol out in the jungle. It has to be seeking out a hundred things in the wild as yet unidentified and unmet. At the same time it has to keep its cool, with its perimeters well-defined, in order to make a systematic assessment of each thing it happens upon. These two forces are constantly at work and often at odds with each other and within themselves. That’s the joy and learning experience from reading their reviews.

 

The two of you, along with a very small number of others, are the standard-bearers of the Amazon classical section and my idols. Thanks to both of you for this discussion and your combined thousands already out there.

 

"As you have stated accurately, I think, that the BPO has become simply a Premier Cru Supérieur , to borrow from Bordeaux nomenclature; the legendary sound is long gone. I recall an interview with Rattle bitching about how loudly they played, and he seems to have taken care of that! I understand better your anger at the decline since 1990 and hope that our trove of recordings will suffice in case we cannot restore the Great Roman Empire."

 

Agree wholeheartedly with your review. Harnoncourt races through some of the movements and makes no effort to project the emotional content of the music. These are some of the worst renditions of these great symphonies that I have heard.

 

This will be of no interest to anyone else but me, but I want to see how much of this applies to me personally.

 

-This is a Beethoven who’s a stranger to bum-waxes. Likewise

-Nor does he use a bidet. Don't have one.

-He says "No!" to man-perms. I like to keep my hair short.

-You won’t find him in a coffee-shop near the offices of Gramophone Magazine, delicately sipping on a soy latte. Depends, is the soy latte over-priced?

-He has tried to assassinate Adam Sandler at least three times. Make that four in the case of Jaden Smith. I have no plans to kill anyone.

-He does not wipe his feet on the mat at the door. I do.

-Counter-tenors – he laughs at them. I don't

-He wants Chigurh to come to him. Hell no.

-He does not clean the interior of his car. I clean my car once in a while.

-Speaking of which, he drives a ’66 Mustang which has not been serviced for the past decade or so. The doors are different colours. Nope.

-He refuses to see any movie featuring Johnny Depp. I don't go to movies.

-He abhors fat-free food, lite-beer and cereal. Depends- is it good?

-There’s something living in the attic. He cares not. I don't want anything living in my attic.

-He wanted Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity to land in Loch Ness so she could battle it out with Old Nessie in a final deus ex machine (and come second in doing so). Never watched Gravity, so no.

-Wearing a black wet-suit, he swims with the seals at Ceduna and Coffin Bay. I won't wear a wet-suit or swim unless I absolutely have to.

-Tofu makes his flesh crawl. I love tofu.

-Most nights he stares at the stars and constellations. Nope.

-When he’s out of dunny-paper, the pages of Vogue (especially those featuring Anna Wintour in all her glory) make the ultimate sacrifice. This has yet to happen, but if it does, I'll have tissues & napkins on standby.

-He has a personal vendetta against K2. Do you mean the mountain or the second piece by Mozart in the Kochel Catalogue?

-He’s always the last person - the very last – to leave the stadium after a game. I don't go to sporting events.

 

Ok, that was fun.

 

The man who brought us the concept of a Beethoven who is a stranger to bum-waxes and gave NH the title "God-Emperor of the Dayaks" certainly deserves all the the Vivaldi Glorias can offer. For what it's worth, the Decca Eclipse 448-223-2 (which includes a somewhat less numinous ditty between the Gloriae) has 11 tracks for the 588 and 12 for the 589.

 

 

Jeremiah: @Dazzler1111: You are most welcome for the Kna! On the subject of Sir Bernard, just now I was looking at his review page on Amazon, and was concerned to see that his most recent was dated 2nd March. But it seems I was looking at the wrong Amazon - in a comment he states "I am only posting reviews on Amazon.com and not the UK equivalent for the foreseeable future". How curious...

 

Hi, Bernard ! Like you I rarely visit FB & then only when I’m prompted by something in my e-mail.

How cool 😎 it is to connect on a more personal level with an apparently like-minded soul. What a breath of fresh air it is to read interesting and intelligent writing ✍️. I miss that. It’s been years since I earned an undergrad degree in Classics &   even since I earned an MSW some 15 yrs later.

Unfortunately Mediocrity is ubiquitous & I think 🤔 that ignorance is the new (well maybe not so new !) & desired Norm. Sad to say ! 😞

Anyway, maybe we can share some witty repartee from here on out, though I’m not so sure I’m on an equal plane. We’ll see... *Best, Q.

 

I am a huge Bruckner fan, and after I saw an enthusiastic review of this item by Bernard Michael O'Hanlon, I was tempted to get it,

 

I'm not sure if I told you, but I laughed myself silly with your ad libs of the Platt article in the New Yorker. He was so obviously full of himself.

 

I've often gone on-line to read your reviews on music and I was alarmed to see the last one was March 2nd. There's never been such a long time between reviews! I was fearing something had happened to you! Are you still reviewing classical CDs and where are you posting them? I've found them very informative and  helpful since I started listening to CM and would  like to keep up to date.

 

B. M. O’H : I’ve got to say you are the funniest & wittiest reviewer I’ve ever read on Amazon. Whence comes your varied & such broad knowledge ? Your review of the 5 Countertenors was Brilliant...even if I do like some of them. Wish I lived near you & knew you personally. Oh, what conversations & learning !

I do enjoy your writing ✍️... John Q

 

At least O'Hanlon has something interesting and original to say.... granted, O'Hanlon rarely says a thing about the music, but there is an original thinker at work.

 

Thanks for your usual informative and entertaining review Bernard. Yes it is a good recording but I agree with you, it's no Karajan. ( EMI/1971)

 

I'm glad to see you are still reviewing ... somehow I thought you'd lapsed into radio silence. No one I know of on Amazon.com writes with your witty irreverence!

 

It is funny how different the sense of humor is. I contacted Bernard first because I like his humor so much and his absolute musical wisdom - to place good above bad, judging by subjectivity. I listened today first two cds of the Schaller Bruckner box. I saw EP and Ralph both have reviewed them in Amazon - another giving 3*, another 5* - I agree with both, but laughed so much to EP’s comment on Schaller and his resemblance of Reinhard Heydrich - politically uncorrect comment, of course, unrelated to music, but cannot help laughing. What is left of music, if there is no humor in it?

 

Mr. O'Hanlon, your eloquent verbosity stirs me yet again. Ever a consonant pleasure to read your reviews, which dazzle in ways Mr. Schiff never does. Bravo to someone who has the courage (re: the corporate goons @ Grammophone who only write under the feigned employ of the major labels and marketing staff) to say what so many of us down here in the quarries, the true listeners, are really thinking and hearing!!

 

I like all of this guy's reviews because he clearly knows his stuff and is hilarious to boot. He's got his own idiom, and it's like whiplash (of the Metallica variety.) I want to rush out and buy everything he likes, but this particular one is tough to find on cd, and I don't do download. Any suggestions?

 

Thank you for your reviews, I think as a collection they qualify as great art! As for this performance. Good God... I didn't think this was possible! Astonishing. Thank you for the recommendation.

 

"Lang Lang is vulgar." I am glad someone has said it. The sentiment wasn't just me being old and grouchy, not just me missing the old, solemn days when classical music was seriously considered and seriously delivered by people who could be seriously intellectual, those days when symphony orchestras played Beethoven more often than Nintendo themes. I will die now, knowing that I wasn't the only one and I didn't myself have to say it.

 

Wanted to thank you for you Mozart/Bennett review on Amazon, but I’m damned if I can figure out how. Anyway, thanks: your recommendations and observations in re: Mozart’s serenade-type music are always spot on. Cheers, Gerard

 

Thanks and thanks again for another superb review. I too have enjoyed Tuckwell's CD for years and years and never get tired of it.

 

Good Lord, Bernard - I rarely don't know a reference or word in your entertaining and perceptive reviews, but you got me twice this time...

 

Bernard once wrote somewhere that if you start off thinking a certain Mozart composition is merely a minor work, you'll inevitably end up doing the music some degree of injustice. You should instead start off thinking - this is a work by the greatest composer in history, and keep an open mind, giving the music full opportunity. You may end up preferring other Mozart works, but you'll almost certainly notice aspects of the music you might otherwise have not have gleaned.

 

Some Haydn trios played by Haydn Trio Eisenstadt. They came my way originally by an Amazon review by EP, whose reviews I systematically went through a couple of years ago, to my great benefit.

It´s a charming set, more leisurely played than the Beaux Art trio, but full of charm and innigkeit, so well suited to Haydn.

Geoffrey I missed my own consumption pun. Darn.

 

Thank you, Bernard, for another extremely entertaining review.

 

Ok Virginia, I can see that Bernard and I are on the same wavelength about most of these things but I would differ (pleasure to argue with someone who knows what he's talking about) on a few things.

 

Among the top-ten priceless Amazon reviews. Well done.

 

Once again, as it happens with every single one of his recordings, the ghost of Claudio Abbado visited the world of Upside Down Under to torture the Night Dreams (Midsummer, Midwinter, and apparently all year round) of our insatiable critic. One can barely imagine the chilling effects and the psychological toll it took. Here is Count Hugo performing the immortal “Man Boob Blues”, as only he can do, in a blaze of organic fireworks. All of a sudden, raising from the abyss, as a reverse Don Giovanni, the gaunt figure of the late Maestro replaces the Count and that jolly tune morphs into the funeral notes of the Marcia Funebre from Beethoven’s Eroica. Please Claudio, stay with our tortured souls of Upside Up, and keep leading us to the edge of those unfathomable depths you showed us. Apparently they just look like little mounds down there.

 

Given the low-class tenor of the above notes, I must wonder whether someone is acting as a BOH imposter. This is so unlike him. My condolences to you, HH.

 

A prolific Amazon reviewer with a gift for acid put-downs but also some clear signs of insanity. He produced the rare laugh ("Alfred Brendel is the Toyota Corolla of his profession") and the slightly less rare flight of disturbing fantasy. I apologize for any memory cells you may lose knowing this man's name. Since you asked about Hurwitz, I would say that O'Hanlon is neither better or worse; he is simply more. He is more Hurwitz than Hurwitz. He is the IMAX version.

 

As for someone calling himself "Bernard Michael O'Hanlon" whose tedious verbal circuses can be found footnoting many an Amazon listing and which I've long since stopped bothering to read, one can only say that his prose style is every bit as self-regarding as the conducting style of Jan Peter Marthe, and quite as likely to obscure or lead away from any attempt at musical truth, insight, honesty or integrity on whatever level of listening or scholarship, Brucknerian or otherwise.

His description of Robert Simpson's comments on the 3rd Symphony as calling for "conflation" is of course a grotesque, self-justifying misrepresentation. As anyone who had actually read the revised version of Simpson's book would know for themselves. . . . . Bien dit. An utterly tedious man who ignores all 20th century repertoire, insults all HIP practitioners, and seems to think even Beethoven's or Mozart's jobbing pieces reveal the Godhead at work. I've had funnier bouts of gout . . . . That’s him! Knows his stuff, though.

 

This is stellar stuff indeed. For about a year now, you've been re-shaping the way I think about Mozart. Many thanks for the recommendation, which led me to successfully seek it out at my local vinyl emporium. This is stellar stuff indeed.

 

My regular readers - both of them - will be aware that I have the honour to represent the entire UK membership of the Australian Knappertsbusch Association, presided over by a cruel, capricious and exigent President who does little to further the aims of the organisation beyond squandering the meagre contents of its coffers on jamborees and junkets to louche destinations. Aided by aspirant members, he recently all but threatened me with expulsion from the AKA when I expressed dislike for Bernstein's way with Schumann's symphonies.

 

All music is reflective of its composer. Schumann, in my el cheapo opinion, appeals most to those who are wayward of centre - namely, the mad, bad and dangerous to know with a fire in their undercarriage. Volatility is all. Much of its predicates "forever young". For the middle-aged concert-goer (and who among us in this dying tribe does not belong to this category) there is other music which make less of a demand on their "margins" At his best, Schumann tells us to revert back to our paradigms of youth and fire - who has the wherewithal to respond?

 

Bernard - Count me in as one of those "wayward of center" people you mention, which is part of the appeal of Schumann to me. Between being bi-polar and having had a perpetually unfulfilled libido, which I understand is just one way bi-polar symptoms manifest themselves, Schumann rings the bell for me. Being the ultimate Romantic composer, his music pulls us back to more youthful and romantic times in our lives. As for me, even though I'm older now, the fire is still there! It's an Unforgettable Fire.

 

You are a scream! Your writing gave me a good chuckle and I thank you for that. Cheers,

 

I'm nearly as much a fan of O'Hanlon as I am Blomstedt, but I think BMO'H is on autopilot here. You want traditional Mozart? There's hundreds of recordings out there to satisfy you. You want straight, middle of the road Mozart? Blomstedt's first go-round with Dresden sounds great. The idea that O'Hanlon gives this only one star more than Rattle's musical atrocity Schubert 9 is simply a loss of scale. He doen't like the premise, so he can't grade the product. This is an excellent recording by my measure, and I'm only too sorry someone so skilled at shooting turkeys has directed his firepower here

 

Bernard I noted that you deleted some comments in a spat on Amazon.com. It's intolerable that your joyless and splenetic interlocutors could get the upper hand so I couldn't resist coming to your defense. Unfortunately Amazon.com appear to have buried my points along with your review. I'm not averse to HIP at all but your reviews are an erudite a joy. .Incidentally I've just discovered Enescu's 1951 performance for the BBC on ARIADNE/Somm with Suzanne Danco (sop); Kathleen Ferrier (alto); Peter Pears (ten); Bruce Boyce (bar) & Norman Walker (b). And it even suppassed expectations !!!!!

 

Your review speaks absolutely out of my heart. Since I'm German I mostly read the German Amazon reviews. I have been listening to the B minor mass lately and fell in love with it again (I have 5 recordings) and I was tempted to buy Gardiner's second recording based on the overwhelmingly positive reviews. But then I found Gardiner on Youtube and listened to it yesterday. Of course, the sound quality suffers on Youtube. But I heard enough to be puzzled and sometimes even shocked by the unmusicality and lack of mystery in his approach. And now I find your in-depth analysis and refreshingly outspoken opinion. My Bach world is no longer out of joint. Well done!!! And thank you!

 

I disagree with the reviewers here. One of them seems determined to review every single John Eliot Gardiner recording with incredibly snide and almost obsessively critical comments. I dread reading Amazon reviews of Gardiner's recording because I always come upon this writer. To him, it is as if Gardiner represents some kind of evil, a Darth Vader of music.

 

Just dropping by to celebrate your amazon classical reviews. Someone needs to provide you with a wage for your services.

 

I am a double bass player in the United States taking orchestral auditions. I have read many of your CD reviews on Amazon, and I appreciate your passion about classical music. However, I respectfully take issue with your consistent public disparaging of historical performance practice. If you don’t like historical performance, obviously you don’t have to listen to it. But why go out of your way to disparage the work of people who love and believe in what they’re doing, when it’s not doing any harm to anybody? Why not let them make music their way while you make music your way? By writing these reviews, are you intending to steer audiences and consumers away from historical performance?

 

Hi Bernard I enjoy reading your scathing comments on Amazon usually directed at Makkeras etc re Mozart!  I'm relatively new to classical and Mozart so after some advice! I like Mitsuko Uchida so sticking with her for piano, but would really like your advice on decent symphony recordings..from 25-41.. with decent sound so recorded in the last say 30 years? Is there anybody you are keen on?. Got a girl friend in Adelaide and both her and son support Melbourne re AFL, not doing bad 6-2 currently I think, should have won the first one too! Your help would be much appreciated! Regards Dave

 

Bernard has been leading the charge against pigeon-holing Mozart as some sort of namby-pamby who music best suited as background music for upscale bookstores. For a long time I was perplexed at Bernard's passionate defenses of an odd pairing of favorites: Mozart and Bruckner - superficially the two composers do not seem to have much in common - indeed, many people would consider the spontaneous and social Mozart and the obsessively methodical inhibited Bruckner polar opposites! Yet it became clear after time, and the sort of repetition of his argument worthy of old Anton himself, that Bernard was making a critical point: Mozart's music was just as powerful in scope - if not more so - than the works of the great later day symphonist, and to treat Mozart as merely a gallant composer, to fail to recognize his power, as was so commonly the case in modern performance practice, completely undercut Mozart's full achievement.

 

please allow me to send you a brief thank-you note for your excellently erudite and entertaining reviews on the Amazon websites.

 Finding out that there exist individuals, albeit rare, who do enjoy Karajan's account of K. 543 was, in a way, socially validating as all of my friends are into HIP Mozart and I had started to feel ostracized because of my enjoyment of this and other dinosaurs (I even enjoy Klemperer's Don Giovanni, so HIP redemption may never blossom for me).

 I apologize for the unwelcome and undemanded epistolary intrusion and I wish you splendid festivities and 2015.

 

Happy New Year to you and yours Bernie! Thank you for all your reviews, and for turning me on to Bruckner. I'd never have known!

 

Greetings Bernard- I hope all is well. I wanted to send a quick Merry Christmas from NY to your family. I’ve been hooked on Wagner lately which naturally led to some Knappertsbusch recordings. He was a real enigma.  Don’t work too hard and thank you for fighting the good fight in the name of music. Happy Christmas!

 

Dear Bernard, Just a quick line to wish you & the family a Merry Christmas and a peaceful & prosperous New Year. I trust that all’s well with you, and your work commitments haven’t been too onerous of late.

 

Let me add - if I may address you with your AKA hat (mitre?) on - that it’s been a pleasure and an education reading your Amazon reviews over the last year, and I look forward very much to more of your inimitable wit and wisdom in 2019!! – James Argyle

 

Hi,

 

I had been meaning to thank you for some time, as it was due to your review that I purchased this.  What an awesome Brahms 1!  I have not put the Schoenberg coupling on yet.  Schoenberg is one of my favourite composers, and it is unfortunate that Karajan did not record Gurrelieder (I have just about every available recording of that remarkable composition).  I read somewhere that Karajan had plans of doing so, but had wanted to do a reduced orchestration version of the piece.  Anyway, I suppose the plans fell through.  And, I've got the Jansons Bruckner 8 in my shopping basket.  When I see a positive review from you on a Bruckner piece, I'm interested.   By the way, are you familiar with Kubelik's Bruckner 3 on CBS?  I think it's quite good.  It's the 1878 version, edition Fritz Oeser 1950.  It's part of a budget box set, so unfortunately no notes at all on who this Oeser guy is.  I put on the Nezet-Seguin on yesterday and I just don't care for the 'original version'.  Apparently, Robert Simpson believes the versions made after 1873 ruined the structure of the piece but I don't know.  I'm on the lookout for a Knappertsbusch recording, but so far what's available is a little out of my budget. Ha Ha! How can you ever listen to such slanderous recordings? Because they're there? Rather you than me mate; I do love your reviews of them but there's nothing much to be said in this music that the greats of yore haven't already said.

 

I searched for your review of this as a litmus test - for both me & you - a 'gauge' of sorts - a calibration of opinion. I thought you might hate it. Likewise I heard 104 on the radio & my jaw-dropped.  Your reviews continue to surprise. Next time someone harangues you for Brendel bashing put one of your 5 stars under their nose ... I've found the Harnoncourt to be the most enjoyable among the Mozart symphonies i've been sampling from your recommendations. Is there any possibility of a searchable archive of your reviews?

 

"Imagine if the stupendous Mass in C Minor, K 427, was regarded as an early work? All one can do is weep." Indeed! We'd have the authentic Requiem too.... I'm sure Mozart's been very busy the other side of the Pearly Gates ;-) But what beauty we're given this side of Paradise, amidst the muck and grime. This is a glorious couple of discs I wouldn't have known about if not for your review... Thanks mate.

 

Thanks, Bernard. Whether we agree or not I always love to hear your take. You're my "go-to" reviewer on here for anything Mozart.

 

What is all this self-indulgent, rambling twaddle?!! I know the insanity of most Australians is medically verifiable, but THIS takes the cake! A little smidgen of ancient wisdom immediately leaps to mind: “It is far better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt!”

 

Q: Finally, he has something than you miss utterly: a sense of humour. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen's character poses "comedy is tragedy plus time". BMO's contributions could be labeled as "ode to Annie". No matter how much I may disagree with his assessments, there is not a single review that should be labeled "not helpful". Your comparison of your reviews with BMO's to me suggests the equivalent of colour blindness or tone deafness.

 

I enjoyed your review. I think I hear the ghosts of Hemingway and H.Thompson in there once or twice. Informative AND entertaining. Thanks for the intelligence. I will deploy accordingly.

 

Thank you! But yours are so much fun to read :) NE stands for New England :)

 

I've had this double CD for a number of years and until I heard the Uchida/Tate you recommended I was satisfied with Brendel. But Uchida and Tate are so much clearer - piano tone and orchestra that the Brendel seems "muddy". Maybe it's just the sound engineers. Grateful for the Uchida recommendation. There is a pastiche reviewer out there - throgglepenny or some such - taking the Bernard Michael out of your imaginative reviews. He seems, amazingly, to be helpful to some readers. This is cruel sport, taking advantage of the trust of others that you intend well and are not secretly despising them for their naïveté. If the point is to ridicule your cleverness and imagination, then it does so with duplicity and arrogance. Deeply unkind to the unwitting and shameful. I am sure you do not give a toss if some people do not like your reviews , but for someone to make some kind of point by deceiving others is despicable.

 

You're nuts! But very funny!!! Love your reviews. I think Bohm took a trial mixture a Prozac and Viagra-anyway it's a great, great performance of the Posthorn (I have the original DGG release) and the recording is so amazingly natural, it reminds me that it isn't my stereo that's the problem it's all those goddamned DDD CDs mastered by idiots. BTW, personally, I think it's Peter North...

 

Bernard, It is too bad that you did not have an opportunity to write this masterpiece 30 years earlier, since I am certain that even the werewolf would have greatly enjoyed it.

 

Bernard O'Hanlon, your review made my day, my week, and probably my month. I cannot agree more with the spirit of it:-) As hard I have tried over the years to find another interpretation of WTC that would be technically better for sound, Rosalyn Tureck's is truly unavoidable - the great one to master them all. But you say it so much better!

 

Out of the mouths of knaves . . . Bravo! The first review by the renowned BO'H I've seen and not taken issue with. This is truly a sublime traversal of Haydn's hidden gems, bypassing but not replacing my precious Beaux Arts by any means; both offer innumerable pleasures and merits. But the Eisenstadt’s recording have me, almost for the first time, sitting up and listening much more intensely to these trios -- amazed by their inspired development sections, countless subtleties, untold poignancy and an almost Schubertian grace that extends throughout. Civility never sounded so good.

 

Most insightful review of the performances and the music. I will never forget the first time I heard Kreisleriana on a tinny car radio, the composer’s struggle with madness was tangible.

 

Slagdish comments that Bernard "needs some sort of musical education", but so far Bernard is the only commentator who has spotted the editing mess-up by DG at 12'33" in the first movement of Brahms 3. DG has tried to patch the end of bar 195 but they have done this with the wrong two crotchets, having taken those crotchets out of bar 194 (not 195) by accident. This is pathetic incompetence on the part of a major recording company. So, musical education or not, at least Bernard has proved that he knows the symphony, and that he's listened to this recording carefully, which is more than can be said for many so-called "professional" reviewers. Editing faults are a marvellous way of finding out whether or not a reviewer knows the work, or whether they have even listened to a recording in its entirety. So many reviewers have been caught out sleeping on the job by not noticing massive technical errors. Just to name a few, "Gramophone" critics have failed to notice whopping big editing blunders in reissues in at least four of Karajan's recordings (his EMI Bruckner 7; his earlier 1960s DG versions of the Tchaikovsky Fourth and the Shostakovich Tenth; and, unfortunately, in his Honegger 3 - for me, one of Karajan's greatest achievements).

 

Hello Bernard, i was able to locate it , EAN 0028942008823 / ASIN B00000E3I3 , unfortunately it is also linked with a Zoltan Kocsis Beethoven CD..Another alternative in cd format could be the eloquence issue ASIN B0002QXRL6 , incl. her Kinderszenen. Great review , as always. Regards from Germany

 

Cheers Mr O' Hanlon your review provides some info not in the sleeve notes. I don't have the RIAS Knap collection but I zoomed in on the box image. The 9# was seemingly recorded just the day before the concert on the Music&Arts CD. I would be grateful if you could confirm this and indicate how the sound compares as I really need a clincher - conspicuous consumption is not my cup of tea. But my dogs developed an unfortunate appetite for anyone who carries a Jiffy bag and my postman finds solace by spreading outlandish rumours. Incidentally your review of Norrington's Bruckner was satirically brilliant it had me and my kids in stitches.

 

My hat goes off to you: solely by your strength of conviction and eloquent reviews, you got me to dive into Bruckner's 8th. (I'm sure shocking for Brucknerians to hear) but was completely new territory for me. There is something, to be said, however, for the wisdom of experience making one more receptive to things deferred. Or maybe I just deceive myself. In any case, thanks.

 

I often disagree with you but can't stop myself from reading your hilarious reviews. Keep up the good job!

 

I too almost always disagree with you and, more often than not, find your reviews distasteful. But like "Cliente Amazon", I've got to agree wholeheartedly with you on this one. And is he playing his new, personally-designed piano (with all the bass strings laid out in parallel rather than across the soundboard)? It sounds a lot like a fortepiano, which doesn't fit with the highly Romanticized mega-vibrato string playing.

 

This is the wittiest and loveliest review I have ever encountered. But I remain curious as to why Herr Harnoncourt was denied a proper and just role in this. Herr H must be uncontrollably irate. Poor soul.

 

Great -- and hilarious -- review, Bernard. On your recommendation I just bought Chicago/Barenboim for the Nullte/D minor. Ralph gave me some good advice about listening to Bruckner; I'm trying to get to the point where I enjoy him as much as Mahler. -- Hope all is well with you, Dan

 

This is very witty but it reads like you came out of your corner with a pair of boxing gloves on. This great musician deserves more than a bout in the ring.

 

Man, I do like your "reviews," in fact, you're probalby the most laughable thing to come out of Australia (I'm sorry, the Penal Colonies) since Dame Edna. We're all slaves to that thing that far exceeds our grasp, right? Like those ancients creatures covered in dust, stultified into inertia before God, as shown in Visconti's The Leopard, and like the Klang of yore, we will be forgotten.

At least Claudio the Tame had a few decent Verdi recordings to show for it, and at least the Sausage King has that one Bruckner 9 to his name. But what of us? A mirror, emblem or grief we ain't. Pitiable and lamentable are we when our desire to express our opinion reaches higher than our lack of talent runs deep.  I for one wish to be burried with the score of Bruckner 7 in my coffin as my bereaved offspring and girlfriend of barely legal age lament a life lived in c-sharp minor.

 

 

Bernard’s and Ralph’s reviews on Amazon were the key to expanding this universe within. I’m forever thankful to them. Let’s hope that the headmistress at Amazon goes easy on the rascals.

 

Enjoyably funny and imaginative review that eschews the ordinary in favour of greater insight by telling a story. Not every point can be made via a statement. Sartre wrote novels to explain existentialism. I am beginning to pity JEG.

 

I love this review, as Bernard states clearly what I have been thinking for years: that the earlier the pressing or mastering, the better. Otherwise the listener gets further and further away form the original sound and what the original engineers recorded and what originally appeared on the vinyl pressings. If one has taken really excellent care of the DGG vinyl pressings (the older ones with the large "tulips" label), and played back on really good analogue equipment, the vinyl will really smoke any subsequent reissue or remastering. One has only to hear the beginning of "Finlandia" or the beginning of the 4th Symphony (with those magnificent contrabassos) of Sibelius with von Karajan to really hear the extraordinary sound or "klang" of this orchestra in its days of glory .

Sic transit gloria mundae. Best wishes, Bernard, keep up the great work against the "Taliban" Those people are not really musicians, but musicologist, and never the twain shall meet!

And I would like to thank you, Bernard, for all the hours of pleasure you reviews have given me. the only downside is that your recommendations have cost me a lot of money, but the results have been worth it.

 

Dude.  Don't you get how envious we are of your knowledge, wit, and intelligence?  Seriously, you are the charisma here.  None of us are close, Mr. Lawyer-man.   ;-) You may be Nero and Elagabalus combined, but you are the charismatic glue that brings us together.   And stop with the bowdlerization.  We hate it.  

 

I must write to say I always find your reviews witty,interesting, informative,infuriating and sometimes incomprehensible!Keep up the good work! By the way I love Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies-there's no accounting for taste!

 

Disagreements notwithstanding, I greatly enjoyed the review. The evocative descriptions of the recording sessions and their aftermath are pitch-perfect. If you one day consider publishing your reviews in book form, please let me know. I'd like to have the volume on my shelves. (I hope you will include some footnotes for the benefit of uneducated fellows such as myself.)

 

"On several occasions I've tried to point how what you're doing in your reviews, your attempt to redress the deeply embedded cultural imbalance holding up Beethoven or even Wagner as more profound composers in toto than Mozart. Our society and certainly Progressive Thought runs strictly Hegelian. So it is that by their definition of history and culture advancement Beethoven, following after Mozart, wrote deeper and more profound symphonies. And when people think this way they, sadly, proceed to perform this way. And of course this prejudice goes double for poor Haydn. This is one of the main areas of agreement you have with the aforementioned GB, who - most illogically to my mind, given his political Leftism - touts his Renaissance masters from centuries afar as the superior composers.  But nothing seems to allay the anger and blindness. So you go on, like some firm Roman General, holding your lines in the German forests against the barbarians and decrying the degenerates from within. Save for Ralph and Quinton & a few others, your military references make no sense and seem sort of nuts. If people only would stop over-reacting and think a moment! Fat chance! When things get tough you call out the Home Guard, and the Berlin marches forth to quell the uprisings. No one seems to notice you leave Gaul to whatever Caesar wishes to take the trouble, rarely skirmish into the British isles, or that you draw the line north of the Po River Valley. "

 

Bernard, no one could doubt your credentials on this opera. Meticulous knowledge and scorn. Devastating - and funny. Laugh to scorn. I was considering this after all the praise - emperor's clothes? Klemperer plays as I write.(Janowitz, Gedda & Berry version, with Price, Minton & Alva Cosi fan tutte awaiting their turn.)

 

How can this review not be helpful? WTF is wrong with people. Where does it say "agree". We may as well all write," wonderful recording delivered promptly " . Or better still, "I bought as a present for my maiden aunt who is very happy with it (though she preferred the dildo my sister bought her)". By failing then to include a product link to said sex toy they merely compound the offence.

 

As a fellow Mozart lover and seeker of the source of purity, I came across your review of these Vespers and was moved to add them to my Christmas list, despite my ambivalence towards Rachmaninov. I'm currently hearing them for the first time and can only say - thank you for the words of introduction! I can smell the sweet fruits behind the first few layers of wrapping, which is alone enough to rejoice.

 

I've been trying to come up with the right words to say about this work since I first came across the two record vinyl set at a university bookstore in 1979. It's one of only three LP records I still have. Since reading your essay, my life is easier; I simply say, "Look up Bernard O'Hanlon's review on Amazon." In fact, your last paragraph says it all. Thank you!  And for whatever it's worth, if you ever DO become Pope, I will read ALL your encyclicals!

 

 

"Lubimov's K310 is a killer." Ok, so I found the first movement on YouTube, and I have been playing it often over the last two days since I saw this exchange. Wow. Thank you, gentlemen. Reading this exchange was a pleasure, and listening to this killer 310 has been edifying. So, I bought the whole cycle from Amazon. (They will be happy to hear this, no doubt.) Thanks again.

 

This is hilarious :) as a leader of one of the string sections of that band of scratchers, I can confirm that Number One's shadow and haunting hot coal eyes were always with us when we recorded this.

 

You are obviously a man of vast learning Bernard. And a few surprises. I was going through your review catalogue and .... Frank Zappa! Seriously? Oh - hang on. You're NOT being serious. Ah - you got me again!

 

 Brendel the Philatelist! Ah, Bernard, cracking as ever.

Just pulled this set off the shelf after a few months away. Very fast Appassionata. As you say, some mysticism sacrificed here and there in the name(s) of force and power - but what f and p.

 

When I read this review, I lauged out loud. When I listened to the recording, I laughed even louder. It conjured to mind the image of Rowan Atkinson at the keyboard.

 

I hope all is well with you and your family.

I’m forever grateful grateful to you for leading me to music that I otherwise would never have known and also for your passion and fury and the core of civilisation that is evident in all your writing. In this time and age there is no longer a difference between hamburgers and culture. All is consumption, even the wisest and wildest expressions of mankind. Amazon has deteriorated even further and is expoliting the reviews and the reviewers even more cynically and chaotically than before, rendering it increasingly unilateral and uninteresting.  I would be delighted and honoured if given the opportunity to join the community. Mahler’s appeal to otherwise sound people is a mystery.

 

Thanks, Bernard. As often (not always) with this music, your endorsement means a great deal given your ability to communicate your enthusiasm in a way that conveys real insight into what you've heard. Much looking forward to the new BSO set as a result!

 

There I was, on Amazon checking out Haitink Bruckner 6 (my personal favorite is Barenboim with the BPO), and I began to read a review... by the first sentence I thought "This must be Bernard..." and sure enough

 

Hi Bernard, what a pleasure to hear from you!

 

All good in this neck of the woods, thank you - notwithstanding work being its usual slave-driving self!  As always, I must confess I get much pleasure and enlightenment from your Amazon reviews, Bernard... especially when compared with BBC Radio 3’s views on the same recordings! In particular the YN-S Mozart opera discs, which they adore. Hmmm...  I’ve been on a bit of a Saint-Saens chamber music odyssey recently - some quite exquisite stuff there - and on your review I bought & was blown away by the Karajan Nielsen 4 / Sibelius Tapiola. Good God but the BPO Klang in the Nielsen is nothing short of elemental!!! On that thread, I owe you a vote of thanks for re-opening my cloth ears to just what glories Herbie was capable of when the mood took him. You should see my Amazon Wish List...

 

I just wanted to send you a quick email to thank you for all your brilliant reviews on Amazon - whenever I see your name in the list I know I'll be entertained and enlightened...and your wonderfully eclectic references send me off into educational labyrinths of Wikipedial browsing... You write with your own unique and glorious Klang.

 

If there is one thing in life I have learned, it is to totally ignore Irish Australians. Mr O'Hanlon's Amazon reviews are THE most negative and cynical pieces I've ever read - and I've read many over the last 50+ years. Not my cup of tea, and that's putting it mildly. Hm, it seems we have a different sense of humour. The fact that I don't appreciate his writings doesn't mean I don't always agree with the gist of what he says, though, some recordings can be awful indeed. But burning down artists like he does is not done in my view.

 

(I don't mean to offend the Schreier fans here, the review just made me LOL - but the reviewer actually agrees with you about Dieskau, though I myself would argue that when he was younger (i.e., during the 50's - 60's) he had quite a beautiful voice). He's funny though, and I actually agree with him on some things. And I also like how he goes against the current zeitgeist which I find refreshing.

 

I've been undergoing a Mahler subsidence. These days the only ones I really find tolerable are 4 and 5. Mogulmeister mentioned Tennstedt for 6 and I'm inclined to agree. BTW, Klien/Amadeus is winging its way to Sydney thanks to your brilliant review. I'm ashamed to say that I don't really know K478, so I'm looking forward to the promised maelstrom. Regards, SC

 

The condescending tone is satirical and most amusing. While I don't agree with everything he says I find BMO'H an astute lover of certain musics I also love and consider him a reviewer extraodinaire, one who appreciates the METAPHYSICS of certain composers/music I relate and respond to entirely.

 

I've got into Bruckner only (fairly) recently due to BMO's uniquely passionate endorsements, and done a lot of cramming. Bruckner's an acquired taste requiring much patience and a refined love of music. On your prompt I've listened to this very recording and it is verily amazing, astonishing even - I "got it" pretty quick. I totally hear the ninth as you say. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Hi Bernard, hope you are well down under (Melbourne I mean, not part of your anatomy!). Pleased to see you are still reviewing, always look forward to your comments. Keep them going mate.

 

Finding Bernard's reviews - dead serious and funny, religion, classical culture, cowboy-hatted Kna, blitzkrieg Karajan was just what I needed at time. I have much deepened my knowledge of basic things - big western symphonies and of course Salzburg kid. I feel I have got more than I thought to be possible - thank you all.

 

This was written years ago and I just read it. Marvelous stuff my boy! You absolutely nailed it. I recently aquired Karajan's 1950 performance in Vienna and I love it too. It is a live recording. I also have Klemperer, Furtwangler, Bernstein (yes he's great here!) and others. This music demands the Klemperer/Karajan/Furtwangler/Bernstein( Yes, Lenny got this music!) approach. Bach meant business here. The story he was depicting in music DEMANDS no less. Excellent review!

 

This link has pretty much changed my life, in a not so different way to the way Bernard’s reviews did just over a year ago.

 

Actually Jeremy is a good reviewer, so I am not sure why there is this attitude about Bernard who is a very unusual reviewer, maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but it is his opinion. I mean it is a matter of taste, no need to get all excited about it. As for Moore, he is one of Amazon's great classic music reviewers.

 

Of course you are not an anti-Semite, Bernard. What you are is a man of spontaneous and comprehending faith, which can allow for insight or better, what Hopkins called inscape. This can make the timid and the conventional gnash their teeth. With you the borderline schizophrenic like Mr. Robson is in the presence of Kryptonite. I have an addition to CDs. Examining its manifestations reveals where my heart is in musical terms. For example I have 50 CDs of Brahms' Second, Op.73, five of which are conducted by von Karajan. The Neymar or Messi of the addiction is someone like Discophage. I mean, I'll listen to medieval music, but I could never discuss the discography intelligently. And if you asked me which performance of von Karajan's Brahms Second is preferable, I will refer you to Bernard Michael O'Hanlon of the Australian Knappertsbusch Association, who has thought more deeply about this question, I am sure, than I have. If I am in trouble emotionally, for example on 9/11 when I knew immediately what George W. Bush and the Republicans were going to do with the melting down of the towers and the hundreds of thousands of deaths to come, it is Bruckner whom I'll play. That day I put Bruno Walter's recording of the 9th and laid down on the floor of my office to let Bruckner take me through the fear and pain. (It has to be felt. There is no way of avoiding it. Eventually one floats on top of the pain.) In 2001 I had two recordings of Bruckner's Ninth. Now I have 33.

 

 

Hey Jeremy, who says we have to make reviews to appreciate - or not - the music being referred to? I consider my taste in classical music most refined and excellent, and who are you to say it isn't? I've discovered loads myself and I'm glad of Bernard's reviews and others to help me find more of the very best. I LOVE classical music and listen to it all day, deriving great pleasure; but I'm more a FEELER than an intellectual and I don't have time to listen to everything; I appreciate the guidance. Thanks mate, but the irony is you're the stupid one round here, and really rather childish and spiteful to boot.

 

Thank you.  Your references always baffle me for their erudition.  You know the difference between Ss. Anselm of Canterbury and Laon, and I bet you know precisely how they each felt about your namesake as well as Peter Abelard (PS--I have no idea).  It is rare and I am always astonished when I read you because you know so bloody much and write so buggeringly well.   (Is that correct usage?)   You should be teaching theology and history.  I rarely meet Catholics in my country who know much of anything about their church.  Same can be said of any faith. I am sitting on my couch and, in the same damn bookcase, I have my Neusner's Mishnah and my 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia.  They fit nicely together.  I believe you would appreciate it.

 

I read Mr. O'Hanlon and I enjoy his reviews. I find them honest. He is clear about his biases. I and others have tried to help Mr. O'Hanlon increase his repertoire, but ultimately the decision of what to listen to is his alone. Having read nearly all of his reviews, I have not found any signs of anti-Semitism.  I have had interesting metaphysical discussions here with Mr. O'Hanlon. I am Jewish, but can handle anything the Catholic church has thought over the last two millennia. I believe we would have more discussions of this sort, but it sometimes makes other readers nervous.

You have made your point about Mr. O'Hanlon in several reviews, and now I think it is time, Mr. Robson, to move on.

 

This is for Jeremy as I can't seem to reply to his comments directly: You're being rather obssessive and vindictive mate. Butt out! Stop being a prime tool. I enjoy reading BMO'H and whilst I don't agree with everything he says, still, he's provided plenty of astute insight where it matters; he's witty and a decent satirist - a revelatory hoot. Reading "Bernies" reviews over the past nine months has significantly broadened both my classical music horizons and collection. You pondered what drives and motivates him? The passionate love of classical music, simple as. You don't have to purchase the music to be able to make a review here, just familarity with the product. Your recent accusations of ant-semitism are childish, spiteful and utterly ludicrous. With regards classical music my tastes often resonate metaphysically with Bernies - 'cept I love Liszt and Chopin Piano Concertos and like a bit of Mahler. Only a bit mind ;-) Peace.

 

One feels sorry for all the people, many of them young, who believe that they are composers and who have been encouraged in this erroneous belief by the example of such as Boulez . People such as Boulez have been supported by many who feel that they must be modern with no regard to quality, pleasure, beauty and enlightenment, to name but a few of the things that make human life a source of wonderment. Such obeisance and such willingness to be bought so cheaply is something I never find in Mr O'Hanlon's reviews and I thank him for it.

 

Lovely. It's a great symphony. Oblivion is nonsense! There ARE wider things in play, as I'm sure everyone will know, soon enough. I'm sticking this one in my mp3 payer along with Karajan..

 

Thank you Bernard! Just what I needed after a long gruelling day and a challenging lunch, attempting to arouse the young to debate the state of things. No luck there. I found out I was wrong about everything. I still don’t really no why as no other argument than that I was wrong was put forward. The world has apparently evolved into nigh perfect place. Just like this recording

 

Cutting through the, granted, amusingly phrased jibes, it seems that the two objections are the lack of volume in voices and the lack of legato in the orchestra. The former is a matter of subjective impression (assuming of course you don't ask for Wagner Heldentenor or even Verdi volume in Mozart.) For the latter, a good idea is to have a look at the booklet. It will then become clear why the conductor made it a point to opt for what you call a "lumpy, line-less conducting".

 

Thanks. I love reading your Bruckner reviews. It was with Haitink's first recording that I first felt like I started to understand the 6th. My current preference is Stein's. As Mr. Crowe says the 6th is the 'problem' symphony, but I think the 1st movement coda may be my favorite Bruckner moment of all.

 

Ralph: I wasn't suggesting that an ideological agenda is present in the review--I generally enjoy Bernard's reviews a great deal when the humor is not too crude

 

Man, I've been ROARING with laughter ever since reading your review of the Boulez CD.  I mean, laughing like I haven't laughed in YEARS.  Mike walked into the room curious to find out what had me laughing so hard to the point of tears, and I could barely read through your review without further cracking up.

 

I mean seriously, you have so perfectly captured this entire era of composition:  "Reader, in the current milieu, you too can be a composer - Boulez-grade, no less. Get a Steinway and push it down a stairwell, accompanied by a xylophone or two in its descent."  And the fact is, if one of these "composers" could have replicated that in a concert hall, we both know they would do it!

 

I responded with a comment, which I hope further extends your really insightful analysis here:  "If you've ever had the (ahem) good fortune to hear Elliott Carter's (ahem) music, it sounds a lot like Bernard's aforementioned Steinway piano being pushed down the stairwell, except in Carter's case, it's scored for piano out of tune."

 

In one review, you have amazingly pointed out (and destroyed) all that is wrong in music today.  Your comment earlier made me think:  Who is the great symphonist of our times?  I had never even thought of that question while being perfectly aware of the answer:  There is none.  Literally, no one.  I don't know that it always will be that way, but it is for now.  It's easy to say that new classical music of substance is dead, because I have great faith in human creativity and ingenuity--it brought us Donald Trump.  Err...maybe that's not the argument I should be making.  But for whatever may yet come, what's coming now is largely worthless.

There is one exception however, and that was a piece that Michael Gandolfi wrote on commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was an organ concerto called "Ascending Light" written to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.  Obviously that's a subject that cuts to home for me, but literally, Symphony Hall erupted with applause after the work was over, and a massive, extended standing ovation--completely deserved for a change.  I had non-Armenian friends who likewise gushed over the work.  It was powerful, moving, and an eloquent tribute.  I hope a recording of it emerges at some point.  The excerpts online gave little sense of the overall work--it lasted about 25 minutes.  But what the excerpts did do for sure is underline how much hair Andris Nelsons has lost in just the last 3 years!  :)

 

Anyway...thanks for posting such an outrageously funny yet deeply informed and insightful review.  Not enough people will see it, but at least those of us that have appreciate it, and your perspective, as pretty fucking brilliant.  :)

Warm regards,

Dave

 

When you're on, Bernard, you are ON. And you were on fire with this review. I don't think I've laughed so hard in such a long time.

 

Hi - I think this review is spot on. It was my main gripe - that Nelsons tried to make big moments bigger by slowing the tempi. For example, I found the buildup in the Adagio was taken too slowly v. Karajan's approach. Overall I have found these Nelson Bruckner recordings enjoyable but nothing so far would supplant any of my favorites. Cheers.

 

This review by B O'H, is brilliant. We need more like these. Despite his coruscations, I might listen to the Ticciati. But he, Ticcers, has a lot to live up to, and it seems he hasn't.

 

Wow, 64 posts.. you must be doing something right, mr. O'Hanlon. I own this horror (by the way, I think you are unfairly kind, this has to be the ugliest Mozart-recording since the René Jacobs-catastrophes) and I wonder if you're familiar with Herbert Blomstedt's recordings of the last four symphonies with the Staatskapelle Dresden, recorded in the Lukaskirche in the early 1980's? Strangely enough, they were recorded almost simultaneously with the Colin Davis-snoozefest on Philips. The Blomstedt-recordings are stunningly beautiful, comparable to his Beethoven- en Schubert-cycles with the same orchestra.

 

Dear BMOH, I bought this on the strength of your review. Bruckner's seventh is my favorite of his symphonies - except when I'm listening to the eighth - and this performance goes to the top of my list. Thank you, thank you.

 

Hi Bernard hope you are very well and all is ok down there. Following your reviews of Suitner's Bruckner I have just tampered (sorry listened) to No 4 and what a great performance. Might be a bit raw round the edges - but Bruckner to my mind is supposed to be raw in places. Oh those Staatskapelle Brass in places reminded me of the great Karajan and the BPO in it's pomp. Hard to believe this is the same Staatskapelle performing Bruckner now! Keep up the good work B. Always find your reviews honest and worth reading.

Regards, Bob Swinhoe

 

Interesting comments. I enjoy all of your reviews, but especially of Bruckner. T

 

 

Bernard, those two sentences express so clearly and concisely and stylishly what I have always felt and thought of this miraculous work but have never attempted to put into words myself. Henceforth, should anyone ask me what this symphony "means" and why it must be heard, I shall quote these sentences, as I have already done for Mrs. D.

 

 

Thank you all for your kind well-wishes as well as continuing reviews. I hope breaking off into the personal is OK from time to time. I enjoy the erudite reviews--and differing opinions--I read from the best reviews here in Amazonia. I marvel at the knowledge of 12th century theology, and how it can be wrapped in so much humor. ;-) In other corners, there are too many comments that concentrate only on packaging and the inclusion of printed libretti, or praise whatever junk is out there so long as it has a famous conductor. I am enchanted by all the remarkable words, which have been so much more helpful than the dross from Gramophone. Cheers all, still in Maui. Mahalo.

 

Brendel's Mother: Superior! Best review ever--humorous and pithy both.

 

As for Mr. O'Hanlon's review, clearly I too think he misses the boat here. Yet along with many others, I find his reviews witty and highly readable even when (perhaps especially when) I think he's dead wrong in his judgments. (I do confess, however, to an uncritical fondness for Australia, Ozzies, and all things related to them, a fondness that dates to a very happy week I spent in Sydney on R&R from Vietnam starting on the eve of America's Thanksgiving Day 1968. I fear, alas, that in the course of the past 46 years, that country has been as radically changed for the worse as my own has.)

 

OK, you made me smile.

 

Or download them digitally via the link you provided, which I just have. Luckily the schoolmaster and philosopher are available to be picked out seperately, not album only! Both coming in under a tenner (UK Pound). Will be listened to repeatedly o'er the next couple o' days... along with Otmar Suitner's Mozart Symphonies (got 'em for free ;-) ) Thanks for guiding awareness of these things.... I've discovered lots myself but it's good to have guidance from one who knows the shit astutely with alacrity....

 

Dear Sir: Possibly a better commentary on this mind-boggling disaster is possible, but I sincerely doubt it. (Though I'd note that Bach the alleged "universalist" somehow didn't storm the ramparts with his operas either.) That said, I am left with just one query: Why TWO stars?

 

Many thanks for a heartfelt unidiosyncratic review which, with your track record in mind, had me reaching for the 'buy' button immediately. Frohliches Weinacht und Prosit Neujahr!

 

Did you really mean to give this 5 stars? Admittedly, the review is a 5, hands down; but the "contagion" itself?

 

Well stated rebuttal, Bernard, but don't think it will slow them down. The classical music recording industry is desperate for pop stars by any means necessary. Linn will keep them busier than termites in a saw mill recording the entire repertoire, from Pachelbel to Xenakis, or until their star status just poops out from overexposure. Grammophone will hail each release as "iconic!" and "revelatory!" until the used bins get so crowded with product even they will start shuffling their promos towards the dumpster before opening. The good folks of Dunedin should take a look around at how they're being used before believing the company rep's patter.

 

BTW- thanks for the heads up about the cellos- never noticed until now. Karajan's knocks it out of the park- I'm at a loss for words.

 

Good title for another fine bit of intellectual demolition work. Best wishes, Arthur

 

Your reviews are delightful. Do you do any writing for which you receive compensation?  Do you wear your hair like Hans Knappertsbusch?

 

I've read several of Bernard's reviews and they are amazing. They aren't just funny but come from a point of view that, though obviously biased, has enormous passion and knowledge about music.

 

You're completely right. As far as Gardiner and his musicians are concerned, it's a digital documentation of a 30-year-trip downhill. Und Deutsch ist eine Fremdsprache - at least to most of these folks.

 

Thanks, Bernard. As often (not always) with this music, your endorsement means a great deal given your ability to communicate your enthusiasm in a way that conveys real insight into what you've heard. Much looking forward to the new BSO set as a result!

 

As usual, right on target.

 

Dear Bernard - Your review of the Cosi production had some smart writing - how often in these benighted time does one come across anyone properly using the word 'dormition'? Or describe the sudden creation of a conga line as a 'congealing'? The most famous conga line in movies - you deserve to see it!

 

How could I have missed BMO's latest ration of vinegar and battery acid? I must immediately send off an expedited order for these recordings merely on that recommendation!!!

 

Yet another irrelevant 'review' by the cleverest, funniest, manliest and most productive non-reviewer troll on amazon.

 

Comparing the Lizard King AND SIR Jiminy to this highly esteemed, serious recording? I am so offended! As usual, wonderful writing from down under. It's been awhile since I came across writing by Mr. O, and tis a a good break from cross checking misplaced thesis commas.

 

On this occasion Mr O’Hanlon comes close to writing a review in “normal” English - I could understand most of it, and I gather he likes this recording! He is right to do so. Nelsons demonstrates an innate understanding of Bruckner so that this disk stands proud in comparison with many other recordings. The Wagner pairing is clearly carefully considered and pays back in spades, with the Bruckner and the Wagner each benefitting from the other. Do buy it - and if you haven’t already purchased the preceding Third coupled with Tannhäuser then buy that too! I’ll pull two words from the O’Hanlon review - “its thrilling”. I couldn’t agree more.

 

 

Ha Ha! How can you ever listen to such slanderous recordings? Because they're there? Rather you than me mate; I do love your reviews of them but there's nothing much to be said in this music that the greats of yore haven't already said.

 

I've never heard a Rattle performance and don't want to. Years ago, when I first got into classical music, the look of him but me right off! My intuition seems to me validated by your unique, amusingly astute criticisms. I got into the true greats real quick...

 

That was a good takedown. How much has this guy actually listened to Bruckner? What he writes about the Second was my reaction to hearing it for the first time. Same for the Fifth. Platt can do better, right? Then... Bruckner's Third is an "attenuated graduation piece, a work in which a composer of high promise already in middle age finally gets his stuff together and writes an unquestioned masterpiece, a citadel that no critic can pull down." If he took off his Mahler Mousketeer glasses, he'd nominate a more fitting work, like Mahler's Ninth. I'll bet you fifty bucks he doesn't understand Mahler either. By comparing his music to a "dream sequence," he's saying "I don't know what's going on but that's what everyone says about Mahler, and I want to be cool." A culture vulture indeed.

 

I absolutely love your reviews Bernard, they have me in stitches but you always have something valid to say about the actual recording you are looking at! This was no exception..!

 

Bernard O'Hanlon, your review made my day, my week, and probably my month. I cannot agree more with the spirit of it:-) As hard I have tried over the years to find another interpretation of WTC that would be technically better for sound, Rosalyn Tureck's is truly unavoidable - the great one to master them all. But you say it so much better!

 

I've never read a more beautifully written, prose or content, review. Thank you.

 

Thank you Mr O'Hanlon for telling me, in your inimitable way, exactly what I want to know about these performances, and about the Andantino of D959 in particular ..... I fully agree (for what it's worth) with your comments on this piece. I sometimes think, as Schabel said of LvB, that this music is 'greater than can be played'. ('Heard melodies'?). I am very interested in your suggested alternatives: Lupu is my current & long-held preference, but I shall now listen afresh to my LP of Brendel (1972 not 87, however) and investigate Perahia.

 

Hi. Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy reading your classical music reviews on Amazon, which have guided me to performers I otherwise never might know (e.g. wonderful Ingrid Haebler).  Your review of Pro Arte's Haydn convinced me that I had a moral obligation to purchase the set. Now I'm trying to track down the Haydn "Philosopher" you wrote about recently. Looking forward to more, and hope you one day get around to reviewing Yves Nat.

 

Bernard, Thank you for the Kubelik & BPO cd. I’m enjoying the gentle airs and extravagant brass and string flourishes of the Watermusic. Haven’t played my vinyl record of it for thirty years. It is a beautiful recording as I remembered it. So much more enjoyable than my Trevor Pinnock version.

 

Cheers, Bernard. I really enjoyed your visit the other evening, as always. I’ve also read some of your Amazon music reviews - great writing, hilarious & passionate. The Period instrument brigade & followers of ‘Jeggy’ will declare a musical fatwa shortly.

 

John & Gemma

 

While I venture to disagree with a great deal of what Bernard O'Hanlon writes, I must admit that his reviews are absolutely hilarious and give enormous enjoyment. He is the Dean Swift of our day.

 

Happy New Year, BMOH. I enjoy your posts. I look forward to soon reading a review of Bruckner's liturgical works, but there is more to life than church music and the B. 9.

 

This is really affirmation wonderfully written of what everybody knows about these recordings.

 

Hello Bernard,

I cannot get enough of reading your reviews, as your taste ( and what you look for in a performance) so often coincides with mine. In any event, I am delighted that you like the Markevitch recordings of the Mozart symphonies. I could not agree with you more! Over the years I have collected on vinyl all the Markevitch DGG mono recordings as I am convinced that he truly surpassed himself in his interpretations with the Philharmonic which was still then the orchestra of Furtwangler. You should hear how good these recordings sound played on good play-back equipment using a Linn turntable and arm with a good cartridge equipped with a CONICAL stylus. This type of stylus, which has virtually disappeared from the market, gives the listener all the power and klang of a great orchestra in full cry. Try to get Markevitch's recordings of Berlioz's Fantastique , Harold, the Tchaikovskii 6th and well as Haydn's Creation, all with the Berlin Phil. To me, they all reign supreme!

Again, all best wishes, and keep up the excellent work.

Joh

 

I have the original vinyl version of this work on DG Archive. The very first edition was on four discs, the second on three and I have them both. I can report that the mono sound is excellent: spacious with a good bass line and good "bloom" on the overall sound. Obviously, something went very wrong with the remastering, as the Berlin Philharmonic in this recording is awesome! It was still the orchestra of Furtwangler. This review further underscores why I am very sceptical of almost all remasterings. The listener becomes further and further removed from the original truth. Fritz Lehmann was a superb conductor and he deserves better than this! I want to take this opportunity to thank Bernard for his superior reviews and his superb wit! We need more like you, Sir, with your superb taste.

 

I have enjoyed reading your comments Mr. O'Hanlon. They are to the point and deliciously un-PC. I have been really turned off by Gramohone Magazine's unquestioning obsequiousness to all things Butt and Gardiner, and would like to see some real discussion rather than just supine acceptance.

 

I absolutely love John Eliot Gardiner, but I also love reading your reviews, Bernard. Seeing your one or two star reviews of some of my favorite recordings never fails to amuse. Perhaps I don't mind a lack of spirituality in Gardiner's recordings because I'm an atheist. Of course, I've never heard a satisfying definition to the word "spiritual," so I don't really know how a music recording can either lack or have it. My experience of spiritual things is sitting in cold, odd interiors, suffering interminable boredom followed by cookies. Or being lectured by a college-aged girl about some book she read and some meetings she goes to. I prefer the latter.  I assume that what you mean when you describe Gardiner's conducting style as "cold" is that it never sacrifices rhythmic momentum to make way for schmaltzy emotionalism. Well, to each his own. Frankly, I don't know why you're interested in Bach. Isn't there a Rachmaninoff concerto, or some horrendous Tchaikovsky symphony you'd rather be listening to? In all seriousness, thank you, Bernard, for making Amazon customer reviews so much more entertaining.

 

I love Jeggy in all things. Thanks for the nice reply, and Bernard is an Amazon treasure!

 

As always I trust your judgement a lot more than those of your fellow reviewers and (unfortunate) brothers-in-arms here. As this set has already been sleeping unopened on my shelves for some years, it can rest for a while still while I'm waiting for Nelsons', which I ordered today solely on your recommendation.

 

Hi Bernard, I read your Naxos Haydn 23, 24, and 61 reviews on amazon and wanted to connect and talk. I read a few of your other reviews and was perplexed and entertained by each.

 

Though I am used to your inimitable turn of phrase, less masonic than a five dollar bum-wax with gaffer tape, made me laugh until I cried!

 

Yes it would seem we have many tastes in common. In my comments attending your review of the Karajan Bach, I failed to mention that as I read it I laughed so violently I managed to cause disturbance and mayhem in my immediate vicinity. It was funny as only the recognition of truth is funny. There is something of heavy tactical machinery in K's Bach but that analogy had never occurred to me until your review. Thank you for making my day! Superb review and this study by Tyson is indeed revelatory. Here is information that shatters some long-standing myths. Thank you.

 

 

no way to understand why the reviewer gives 5 stars after such a lucid review.

 

 

I must say, I find your reviews both entertaining and enlightening. I've been a classical music afficionado for 20 years off and on, I have taste and I trust your judgement.... Recently my enthusiasm has reawakened after several years exploring other musical genres... Searching around I always look at the comments and smile when I see yours! I'm either interested or in agreement with your uniquely proffered assessments. After reading through a few past ones I've promptly searched out some of your favoured performances and alternative recommendations - such as this one, the Mass In C by Leppard. Found a cheap copy and waiting for delivery. The same with the Kempff Schubert D960 - I received it today. Where I can't find a cheap or reasonably priced copy I'll see what freebies I can find (naughty I know), or I'll check if I can find 'em on Spotify so I can listen - like I have with the Karajan Concerto Grossi, the Keilberth/Beethoven 7 & 8, the Kleiber 6th, the Haebler Mozart Sonatas, the Bohm/Mozart Symphonies, the Norichiki Limori ones and the Edwin Fischer Mozart Concertos....Last week I downloaded from amazon the Seigmund Von Hausegger Bruckner 9th! You are appreciated fella!

 

 

Dear Bernard, thank you so very much for your reviews. I have stumbled upon them only a couple of days ago, searching for the best version of Mozart piano concerti. Let me just say that I enjoy reading your reviews as they are wonderfully written and they give me a chance to learn more about music, where I am used to only follow my inner feelings. So, thank you very much again!

 

Jesus Bernard  - I've never laughed so much as after reading your reviews for Amazon.  Life has become worth living again!  Bravo you dear hoot!  John (www.schiller-humphreys. com.....that's my line in music).

 

Good Evening Mr. O'Hanlon, I just wanted you to know how much I enjoy reading your reviews of Bruckner's symphonies on Amazon. You write not only intelligently, but quite beautifully -- and not without a wonderful sense of humor. As an Episcopal priest for 38 years, I do a fair share of writing, and it's a joy to encounter someone who takes the craft seriously.  For what it's worth, I've listened to Bruckner ever since HVK'S 4th appeared in the 70's, but didn't really get him until I heard my first and only live performance of the 5th.  I had been in Italy taking care of the little Anglican Church in Venice from Ash Wednesday to Easter 5, 2016 -- and a few days before returning to the USA I heard the La Fenice Orchestra perform it under the late Jeffrey Tate. Although not HVK, I thought I had died and gone to Heaven -- and now have about ten complete cycles.  Anyway, my musical gods are Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schumann, Verdi, Wagner -- and now Bruckner.  My gratitude to you for assisting my education.  Kindest regards, Frederick (Rick) Buechner, Thomasville, Georgia USA.  fabuechner@aol.com Sent from my iPhone

 

I had the pleasure of savoring each word of this take down. Oh the elegance. Oh the contempt! I’ve had a difficult time choosing my favorite line.. there are so many. Based on our recent conversation though, I think the whole thing is summed up in this all-inclusive question: “... what’s one to make of this carbon-neutral, tepid affair where eschatology has been reduced to the sleekest of junk-mail?”

 

Every time I thought he had finished, he landed another punch. This horse is indeed dead!

 

 

I've read Bernard's feedback before and found it entertaining and enlightening. What would be useful, in addition to the diatribe, is a pointer to what you, Bernard or others feel is the better option. Surely there is a reference version of Mozart's Requiem that any number of listeners would enjoy much more than Jacobs' apparent butchery, yes?

 

 

Great review! It convinced me to purchase Weil rather than comparably priced complete set. Life is too short for this atheist to wade through the early masses.

 

Brilliant, Bernard. You tell 'em. You are incisive, they are vacuous. Are they paid to write such drivel?

 

 

This must be the funniest intro to a review that I've ever read. I had tears in my eyes. Thank you for your geniality.

 

Mr.B.M.O'H: I find your "review" very strange- as if Crocodile Dundee were writing. Stay well, mate. ECJ

 

Keep those insightful and witty reviews coming Bernard ! Very enjoyable.  Ouch !!! Abbado received a real skewering from you here Bernard . You obviously find CA's conducting bland as melba toast . Honestly, I never warmed up to his Schubert /COE either. I think Wand"s Schubert wonderful. But, Santa Fe Listener apparently finds Wand as dull as dishwater ! He, like you, has a way with the word. The polar opposite difference of opinions on Amazon often leaves me perplexed . Oh well, I guess that's what makes this hobby interesting . BTW I wouldn't be without Abbado's BPO Mahler 5,6,7 and 9 though. I'm sure you'll disagree.

 

 

I agree with you that Mozart was the greatest artistic genius to ever live...I personally would prefer the posthorn serenade to all Beethoven's symphonies...except perhaps to the second fugal movement of the Eroica; there Beethoven comes close to the emotionally nutritious value of Mozart...in fact, in my humble opinion, Mozart was the most gifted human being ever lived.

 

 

Et cum spirito tuo .... for what it's worth, I hardly ever agree with your reviews but I always look forward to reading them!

 

 

Let me say just a word, however, about our shadow host Bernard. I not only appreciate his passion and way with the language; I also appreciate his knowledge and point of view, both of which he delivers with inimitable zest. Life is short; death is long. There's no point to communing with great art of any variety if the passion is lacking or one is afraid of "stepping out onto the field". So, Bernard, if you are at all following our colloquy, please accept this warm and genuine salute for your service to the musical art, and those that love it!

 

 

"A reviewer on Amazon wrote a spoof diary of Sir John Eliot Gardiner that portrayed him as excruciatingly vain." - http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/heckler/9512642/the-heckler-why-does-john-eliot-gardiner-have-to-be-so-rude/

 

Great review, as usual. I agree with an earlier statement by you that there is no perfect Don Giovanni this side of the pearly gates...

 

 

Hi Bernard, Your lines about Battle are among your most amusing and memorable! J

 

EP -- "the fleshpots of Mozart" certainly created the laugh it intended!  I think you may have single handedly defined a new sexual fetish for the next DSM!

 

Bernard: Just checking in-- making sure. You heard the B9 the other day--or do I need to crank it up? I'm enjoying the collection; thanks again for the recommendation! I may have some more discerning comments as I listen more.Your passion is inspiring, but makes for a hard act to follow!

 

"Period Practice Taliban." what a great review! Wonderfully written. And, yes, I happen to be a Leinsdorf admirer. I grew up with his Beethoven symphony cycle w BSO on RCA. Every one of those recordings still sounds to me -- despite all the "greater" performances -- excellent.

 

As per my reply to your review on Stokowski's Fireworks (where we are in cordial disagreement) I have been away from these pages for too long and that's to my disadvantage. Your writing is incredibly witty and the worlds you imagine are awesome. How you are not plying your trade as a critic on the pages of a major new organ (restaurants would suit you I think) is a mystery. Thanks for several doses of much-needed mirth; there is little that we British have to find amusing right now and I fear greatly this will extend to the up and coming Ashes series. My very best, Tom

 

 

Sir: I discovered, with joy, your many reviews on Amazon. What are your recommendations for a Beethoven's ninth? Thanks in advance, Chip Irving Denver CO USA

 

This is truly one of the most brilliantly idiotic reviews I have ever read. Now on to reviews that talk about the actual recording...

 

Wonderful, insightful review. I'm unconvinced that one string instrument to a part works in his recordings of the concertos but he certainly loves the music. So I forgive him.

 

Dear Bernard, I am once again picking myself up off the floor after reading a BMO’H review...this time, your frankly brilliant demolition job on Rene Jacobs’ new Mozart Requiem (or rather, his mutilation of it). Superbly written as always, insightful and entertaining. If reviews could be reviewed, this one would be five stars without breaking sweat. Just for my interest, by the way... Of the versions you’d place at the diametrically opposite end of the scale from the Jacobs horror, who takes the palm, would you say? Hoping all’s well with you, and that work & study are less onerous than when you last wrote. Best regards, James.

 

Thoroughly enjoy your reviews, Bernard, contrary as they often are, especially the historical references. A font of knowledge! Always good for a laugh, and that comes as a compliment from this very novice listener. I gave you a 'helpful' vote, but I'll give you an 'unhelpful' later if it helps your 'cause'...

 

 

But I should post these comments elsewhere, not here. I sometimes have trouble understanding your humor, but generally find your reviews delightfully free of the orthodoxies that prevail among professional and amateur reviewers alike.

 

First, thanks for all the reviews; even when I disagree with them (not often) they're consistently entertaining and helpful.

 

 

As for your review, very good as usual. Naturally as you write so well and have your own style many do not understand, it is a pity that you do not do so well in the rankings. Probably you do not worry about this. If you were to write differently, which I hope you do not, you would be head and shoulders above all others. Regards Tony.

 

Dear Mr O'Hanlon

 

Just a thank you for your reviews - which I enjoy (insofar as I can, being (a) a pommie (well, sort of), (b) a complete stranger to you and (c) an untrained ear) and which have informed a good number now of my purchasing choices.  Never a dud to date.  And actually almost always something interesting I didn't know or hadn't been able to put into words myself. 

Please don't feel any need to reply; but it seemed only right and I have wanted for a while to say how much I appreciate your work.

With warm regard, Nicholas O'Sullivan

 

 

You are a very brave man, Mr. O'Hanlon. I have never seen you resist a Bruckner cycle, but please be careful.

 

 

Abe Froman's spokesman, Ferris Buehler, says hello. Great review!

 

I read a review on amazon once that I found perfect. Perhaps it was yours. I'll paraphrase. The reviewer and a friend were enjoying a coffee at a beach side cafe somewhere on the Mediterranean and the reviewers friend commented "Mahler predicted the entire 20th Century in his music. Fascism, genocide, world wars, the holocaust, global environmental crises, it's all there in his music." To which the reviewer replied "That's why I listen to Haydn!"

 

Love the new stuff This line in particular -

 

When one considers the number of fine musicians who disappeared in the Gramophone Show-Trials of the mid-Nineties, it’s astounding that Barenboim is still in circulation and hellbent – what a word – on recording everything from Albeniz to Zemlinksy

 

You have conveyed - with great aptness - the experience of Celi's Bruckner in general. Very well said, indeed.

 

I could not agree with him less. I think that Schiff's playing is neither prim nor boring. However, I thought the review was brilliantly funny and life-enhancing.

 

Absurdity is fun. If I encounter any more complaints by Amazon writers about Bernard's entertaining reviews I shall unleash my army of invisible teddy bears on the culprits.

 

Bern, old mucker, ignore cries of 'pretentious' etc, and keep on exactly the way you have been. Yours are the most enjoyably irreverent, flamboyantly honest reviews on the scene.

Best regards, Glyn

 

As amusing as ever, Bernard! You have truly lost your way! Thanks for posting ;-) Yes, Afraid we're all wayward souls, Bernard, to one extent or another. More power to your keyboard is what I say ;

 

 

Thank you! One of the most exhilaratingly droll reviews I`ve read in these pages. I haven`t heard Woger`s recording (though, perversely, your comments make me long to) but I can imagine its horrors. I must admit I didn`t take to him personally either when he was the leader of the panel on Maestro a few years back on TV. Been reading some of your others - I really should get a life - and I thank Whomsoever for such a reviewer on these too often dry & drab pages.

 

This is definitely the most hilarious and well-written review I have ever read on Amazon. It is certainly the only review I have returned to many times, and it never fails to delight with its erudition and subversive humour. Hats off to you, Mr. O'Hanlon!

 

What a wonderfully entertaining review! If ever some scholar/insomniac is tempted to publish a book entitled "100 best reviews from Amazon", this review begs for inclusion.

 

 

A pleasure to read that review. Both humorous anD clever

 

Your review is great fun. My transcription of the yellow pyramid is on its way to Venusberg, from Canada of all places. It should arrive any day now.

 

A bravura display (as usual). Thank you Bernard, you have led me by the ear to the cd. I loved the anecdote about two young pianists who were travelling in a train. Their discussion turned to Edwin Fischer, and they commented on the large number of wrong notes he played. At the end of the journey an elderly man who had been sitting in the carriage asked the young men to help him take his suitcase down from the luggage rack. As they were doing so, he murmured "I'm afraid it's very heavy. It contains all my wrong notes."

 

 

A great review. A pleasure to read.

 

You do tickle my ribs, Bernard! Reading your reviews: always a pleasure and never a chore!

 

Having been set up with the cowboy hat booklet picture, I spat my coffee all over the table when I read your 'yee-ha!' cymbal crash comment! Love the revue, love Kna, Celi and Hvk, but, why oh why are you such an infuriating knob regarding HIPP performances?

 

I won't mention them if you won't. By the way, would like some fish to go with all those chips precariously balanced between your Atlas-like shoulder blades?

 

Very amusing, and it's encouraging to find someone else who is as tired of the joyless sterility of HIP as I am. I strongly suspect that if we had only ever heard Beethoven in the HIP version, the world would have lost interest in him decades ago. The snobbery of it all is tiresome too. I quite like baroque music and my starting point is ASMF (for me the HIP approach has an unpleasant drone-like quality) but countless reviewers dismiss them as old fashioned. Hell, the music itself is 400 years old, so what's your point? Plus, if it hadn't been for ASMF and I Muisici, the Baroque revival might never have happened. What's most laughable of all is that most people - especially younger audiences - don't even care about classical music and I can perfectly understand why. There's a whole world of other music out there, most of which makes a much more immediate connection with the listener, so why create yet another obstacle by insisting on tinny, unemotional performances?

 

I'll never get to listen to this stuff with this road crash review in my head. (The review was not a road crash, obviously). Back to Karajan or Zinman. Your Biggles review of JEG has prevented me even trying his later work (last I have is 1980). I like Hogwood's Messiah but I was surprised he had attempted Beethoven. Why do people not find your reviews helpful? Do they need everything set out as bad or good with simple signposts? Jesus spoke in parables ffs. And he never made me laugh.

 

 

Great review and I completely agree with your convictions in regard to the scratchy music brigade. I also agree with your excellently composed opinions about this recording. I

 

Bernard, thank you so much for your insightful, witty review. I am a self-confessed Bach newbie, but also a devotee of Karajan and Wagner, so was very unsure of which way to jump with the St Matthew passion - period authenticity or stick with Herbert ...

 

That's my kind of review - elliptic and embracing. Bravo sir!

 

What is all this self-indulgent, rambling twaddle?!! I know the insanity of most Australians is medically verifiable, but THIS takes the cake! A little smidgen of ancient wisdom immediately leaps to mind: “It is far better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt!”

 

 

Re-listening to this now. You're right, it's a belter from the get-go. And (right again), the adagio from Hornsignal is imbued with an almost Bruckner-8-like (!) sense of stillness and contemplation.

 

 

Your review may not please very many, but I laughed out loud! I have not heard this particular JEG performance, but knowing his Mass in B minor and a few others, I do not particularly want to. A refreshing change from the usual uncritical, fawning stuff in the Amazon reviews.

 

A loyal Abbado admirer who knows the performances on this CD comes across this review on Christmas Day and is faced with a dilemma: whether to press the 'no' button (with such venom of attack that he breaks his laptop keyboard) or the 'yes' button (because he likes the literary style). Well, it's Christmas Day (over here it is anyway; maybe not in Australia by now). So goodwill to all men (etc.) and with a heavy heart, a black conscience and a sense of disloyalty to Abbado I'll go for the 'yes' button. After all, the CD is ... er ... nice.

Leave a reply

 

Loved it! The music and your review. Anyone who doesn't get it is probably anus maximus.

HB

 

Bernard, I was going to suggest that we refer to an English public schoolboy as "Jeggers" but this is no time to introduce more confusion into critical apparatus, so I have used your nomenclature in my latest paean of praise to a Jeggy disc, Vienna Soiree, and acknowleged you.

 

 

lol :) I like the Bilson/Gardiner recordings of the Mozart concertos but this was really funny.

 

 

Rattle's Schubert 9th is not merely a CD but a canvas for liberal daubings of BMOH's wit. Another one for my imaginary anthology of great Amazon Reviews. Bravo!

 

Wonderful review and a lot closer to the truth than Rattle's vomit-inducing fan club and sycophantic critis will acknowledge (the same goes for Kaufmann's disgusting 'Das Lied von der Erde' - sings all the parts because he knows better than the composer how he wanted his music performing). Thank goodness someone else can see through the Rattle phenomenon now for what it really is. Of late we have had mediocre (or worse) performances the sycophantic critics will praise to the skies for fear of upsetting St Simon and lose their freebies and the fan club will buy irrespective of its quality.

 

Wasted in the review pages on Amazon. Very funny. I think I had better buy it now to see whether there is a thread of truth behind the great wit.

 

Bernard, I learned an important lesson with the way you dealt with an abusive, unpleasant comment.  That comment, when I first read it , sounded unsubstantiated, censorial and narrow minded to me. But you are right: I read it again and, this time, I found it just amusing and I laughed. When I think about a conductor who is an "aussie convict" I laugh again, actually.

 

G'dye, mite, from a fellow Melburnian! While I don't agree with your view of Gardiner's Bach at all, I found your review hilarious. And wouldn't it be booooooring if we all thought the same? (Not to mention unprofitable for all the poor saps who dared to go against the party line).

 

 

Bernard, I am pretty sure that you don't exist and that your reviews consist of unused material by Spike Milligan being posthumously uploaded by his literary executor (that's intended as a compliment, by the way). According to the current state of the voting, so far nine of us (out of 40) have found your review helpful, which isn't bad going in view of the lack of humour shown by most Amazon forum readers. I am probably not the only reader who regularly checks the link you gave to Crazy Nick's train line in the hope of seeing a "tale or two". No sign of anything yet. We'll keep checking.

 

I wouldn't say the review was helpful in terms of deciding whether or not to buy, but it was funny!

 

Thanks for the link, Ralph. I fell apart with laughter when I read the Antarctic review. Even as someone who admires much of Gardiner's work, I really don't think people should take such offence.

 

Helpful? Yes. It has really cheered up my day. Thank you.

 

Heh heh... I'm quite fond of this cycle despite Norrington's idiosyncrasy but your right royal trashings always make good reading. I suspect that even 'Sir Woger' would see the funny side. More power to your curare-steeped pen. Keep them coming.

 

Bernard, thank you for educating me on the Arch of Constantine. I nearly spilled my coffee at "sadly, I left my Luger at home".  I wanted to leave but stayed on the basis that it had to get better.  The best bit of the film was the ending. Because it ended.

 

A wonderful review, arguably your best on this website. You say exactly what needs to be said and do so with precision and eloquence. And you manage to get in an allusion to my favorite poet. I have owned and enjoyed this set for many years. The rich, diaphanous sounds of the BPO under its greatest conductor since Furtwangler: what's not to love?

 

Recent but avid reader, first time caller. Not even slightly interetsted in Kna doing Bruckner but I'll read your review! Love your work, especially when I disagree with you because a) it's always good to think again isn't it, b) you make me laugh and c) we don't want to live in a Penguin Guide world. Still very fond of my Jeggy (sorry) recording of this (wh

 

I found your review both illuminating and also hilarious. I'm curious: do you know Mehta's Bruckner 8 with the LAPO on Decca? I have found that performance to be decent if not particularly inspired. What do you think of it? By the way, if I see this Sony Bruckner 8 for cheap I'm going to get it for a good laugh as you suggested. Thanks!

 

Great -- and hilarious -- review, Bernard. On your recommendation I just bought Chicago/Barenboim for the Nullte/D minor. Ralph gave me some good advice about listening to Bruckner; I'm trying to get to the point where I enjoy him as much as Mahler. -- Hope all is well with you, Dan

 

 

Yikes!!!! Somebody's choo-choo is a little coo-coo!!!!

 

Thoroughly enjoy your reviews, Bernard, contrary as they often are, especially the historical references. A font of knowledge! Always good for a laugh, and that comes as a compliment from this very novice listener. I gave you a 'helpful' vote, but I'll give you an 'unhelpful' later if it helps your 'cause'...

 

Bernard,

Since you gave me permission to "maul" your Bruckner reviews, here goes: When I read this I laughed until I cried! Why this man was ever allowed to record his perverse interpretations of Bruckner is beyond me. When I first popped this disc into my player I thought, "Is he drunk"? After listening to the whole thing, I wanted to get drunk. Thanks for this.

 

Round of applause ........

 

 

Ok, Mr. O'Hanlon, I know wit when I see it flashing, even in these benighted commercial precincts. What is there that entitles you to have more of it than evolution has seen fit to vouchsafe to the rest of us ham-handed, slack-jawed, mouth-breathing scribblers? I can see that for mirth, insight, and that certain je ne sais quois, I will have to look no farther than your reviews. I can only say, "Eximious."

 

Thanks, haven't laughed so hard in weeks. Best review on Amazon IMHO!!

 

I absolutely love John Eliot Gardiner, but I also love reading your reviews, Bernard. Seeing your one or two star reviews of some of my favorite recordings never fails to amuse. Perhaps I don't mind a lack of spirituality in Gardiner's recordings because I'm an atheist. Of course, I've never heard a satisfying definition to the word "spiritual," so I don't really know how a music recording can either lack or have it. My experience of spiritual things is sitting in cold, odd interiors, suffering interminable boredom followed by cookies. Or being lectured by a college-aged girl about some book she read and some meetings she goes to. I prefer the latter.  I assume that what you mean when you describe Gardiner's conducting style as "cold" is that it never sacrifices rhythmic momentum to make way for schmaltzy emotionalism. Well, to each his own. Frankly, I don't know why you're interested in Bach. Isn't there a Rachmaninoff concerto, or some horrendous Tchaikovsky symphony you'd rather be listening to? In all seriousness, thank you, Bernard, for making Amazon customer reviews so much more entertaining.

 

I love Jeggy in all things. Thanks for the nice reply, and Bernard is an Amazon treasure!

 

I came late to the feast, having only just discovered this sublime review. The (very apt) ironies of Scott's enterprise only deepen the pleasure. Intellectual demolition work at its best! (And only very slightly exaggerated.) BTW, Bernard, on the strength of your reviews (mainly of Jeggy), I bought your book about the two undertakers and have only just begun reading it.

 

 

O'Hanlon strikes again.

 

What a beautiful review! I can understand why Mr. Mozart decided to contact you from beyond.

 

Amusing, and I sent the Mozart quote to friends.The review is a nice Swiftian jeu d'esprit. I look forward to more.

 

As the Grand Old Priest of HIPP, I want my opinion respected here, Bernard and others! Watch your language! This performance is utterly bizarre, not played at any standard of instrumental proficiency that I could respect, and not a whole lot of fun to listen to even once. So there!

But I can't let the notion that Abbado has been anointed as "one of us" stand. His conducting here reminds me altogether too much of dear old Placido singing Handel.

 

I love how you put this in the midst of the other 5 star reviews - good move... You have a wonderful way with words.

 

and i was proud of being irish,until i read this dreck.

 

Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I scroll through Amazon looking for bargains, and I read reviews. I came across your review of Abbado's Beethoven set, which has been sitting unplayed on a high shelf since early in the millennium. Your review gave me a good laugh and went back to sleep, thinking that I would give Claudio a shot the next day. I remembered the cycle as being energetic, but bland, like hospital food.

 

This is almost too witty and astute for an Amazon review. Very funny, and very accurate.

 

I got a genuine kick out of this passionate, somewhat rambling, slightly irrelevant review. I sure did enjoy the mischievous confidence and historical context! Not a lot of CD reviews make me giggle; combined with a tear or two.

Heine was an MOT (Member of the Tribe) of course; and it's interesting that despite abandoning his religious roots he saw what was up with his hosts, though many of his co-abandoners just signed onto German nationalism with the natives. If I may be allowed an understatement: It didn't work.

 

 

It is most gratifying to see part of my humble homily included in your adroitly assembled arsenal of ammunition. I have witnessed your holy war from a safe distance and comment to endorse your eloquent efforts and wish you success in confronting these rubes' rowdy regurgitations. Please do not let these valiant efforts interfere with your reviewing activities. One of your poised polished ebullient evaluations offers more intelligence, ingenuity and insight than the entirety of the ostentatious oeuvres of this gaudy gallivanting group of empty-headed excrescence. A blessed day to you sir.

 

Wow. You jealous aussie unmusical idiot. I bet if the conductor was an aussie convict you would be praising this music to the hilt. Get a life if that is at all possible with you. O, and go and get your hearing checked as soon as possible. Jealousy is so unbecoming.

 

I've never read a more beautifully written, prose or content, review. Thank you.

 

 

Brendel the Philatelist! Ah, Bernard, cracking as ever.

 

Much impressed by your review - actually, by a lot of your reviews, I seem to keep coming across them of late

 

This reviewer's contempt (if contemp is the right word) for John Eliot Gardiner ("Jeggy") is hilarious (see some of his other reviews--very funny stuff). But he never really seems to get specific about his problem with him--he just HATES him (and also James Levine, but not in such entertaining fashion).

 

O´Hanlon is cool, sheer Aussie freshness

 

This is to thank you for the nudge given by your review, as well as your other postings on Bruckner & Wagner - to say nothing of your epic wrestling with the whole Baroque/HIP conundrum...CHEERS !

 

Bernard, I repeat myself: you have to publish this stuff in book form. On paper. The Web is not permament enough. And you owe it to the future generations. "If you blab it to anyone, Alessandro Moreschi will no longer be the last castrato in history. Do you understand?" Brilliant. Just brilliant!

 

 

Another evocative, inspiring, and thoughtful review, BMO. I concur fully re: Celi's version. Although that one is sonically superior, I also enjoy Tennestedt/LPO.

 

 

LOL Nice one, Bernard. This one is the funniest yet and dead on. The first K550 and 551 I have ever bought was Boehm's. After listening to it I avoided Mozart symphonies altogether. Took a long while before I came around. If that's not a one star album I don't know what is.

 

 

You make such good points that I am deleting my own review, buying the

set, and waiting to reconsider this cycle. It will seriously cut into my total number of reviews, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice.

 

As always, Bernie, your use of language, imagery and humor make a wonderful read, thanks.

 

 

This one had me rolling on the floor! You really have to stop, reading reviews should not be so entertaining.

 

Like Cairns' treatise, your review is a pleasure to read. I am now persuaded to get his book and to wander around this website to enjoy some more of your piquant prose.

 

The image of your final sentence will reappear whenever I revisit planet K304 again.

 

Thank you for the outstanding and balanced review. Makes me want to check out this recording. I admire Karajan but, like you, am knowledgeable enough not to apply indiscriminate adoration like his many fans.

 

You sir, have style. Very fun review.

 

What a delightfully written and grandly digressive (yet totally on point) review! Are you familiar with Luis Bunuel's "Do You Know the Milky Way?", which takes place on the very same pilgrimage road and explores some of Holy Mother Church's more entertaining heresies? Which brings us back to Bruckner. (All roads lead to Bruckner, amirite?) Like Bunuel, he was immersed in Catholicism; unlike Bunuel, he was profoundly devout about it. Where am I going with this? Digressing in the spirit of Bruckner, and the first part of your review, I guess

 

What a great description in this review!

 

 

I find myself in rare agreement with MBO'H here. Karajan's 1977 Beethoven, and the Pastorale in particular, have a timeless quality for me. In its best moments, the music seems to be suspended in time and space and to unfold naturally out of itself. The interpretations are almost devoid of "interpretation" which may strike some as "distanced" and impersonal but what I mostly hear is that phrasing, articulation and dynamic are just derived from the score, not from any idea of performance style as such. But the playing is still very engaged and sonically intense so what one hears is basically just the sonic substance of the music, what the music is, not what it should be like. The 6th seems to lend itself particularly well to that approach because it is constructed from simple basic elements in an almost minimalist way. Karajan also manages to sustain the long lines very well because, as MBO'H said, he knows exactly where the real climaxes are - and where they aren't. The finale is particularly tricky in that respect because it seems to go from one climax to another and many conductors hit the individual climaxes so hard that what comes in between comes off as anti-climactic transitions and what comes next as forced new climaxes; and that is where Karajan does especially well. In his reading, the music is more like a continuous musical hillscape. Every time the music rolls over a hilltop, he keeps the long line going and so naturally leads to the next hilltop until the music has reached a state of quiet satisfaction and peace so the music also seems to end all by itself in a very natural way. It just rolls over the last hilltop and then comes to a stop in the valley below.

 

"Furor Teutonicus" I like that. When it comes to turning a phrase, your imagination surely knows no bounds. Keep working, your reviews bring much pleasure.

 

Hello and thanks for the excellent review. I always read your reviews when I see them, and they are all very thoughtful and entertaining.

 

Bernard is what Bernard writes. And no matter how one may disagree with him, nobody gets any worse from imbibing his well crafted prose. Amazon gives its visitors the option to vote a review as helpful or not. Of course, this has degenerated into 'do you agree with this review, or not', especially since those who write helpful reviews, i.e. those who are most likely to promote sales, get rewarded. Long live an anti-zeitgeist contrarian with a well informed cultural compass!

 

 

Finally, someone who belittles Abbado, Rattle, Jansons.. my kind of listener.

 

Greatest Classical Music review I've ever read! Seriously. You've expressed my own sentiments to a tee. Furtwangler Forever! And down with the "sleek" and "eco-friendly!"

 

 

"Schubert's sonatas are less public utterances and more like pensées, personal revelations and keepsakes." very well put- I could not agree more. Your review was so interesting-- thank you!

 

At first I thought you had issues, but soon learned you're simply intolerant of mediocrity...and an author of merit. Now I look for your Mozart reviews and heed them well. If you can hear me, I'm wondering what you think of K.364 Kantorow on Denon?

 

As a conservative member of the old firm I appreciate your educating me on the Omega Point- I did not know of it. Ive been listening to Cosi again the last few days and never tires of reading about the different versions on Amazon.

Still haven't hear Otto's, but there is no rush. I can say that no other piece of music has affected me as much as K.588. What a blessing that we have it- keep up the great reviews Bernard!

 

As you wrote about K.527 there is no perfect K.588 this side of the pearly gates. BTW- thanks for the heads up about the cellos- never noticed until now. Karajan's knocks it out of the park- I'm at a loss for words.

 

Yes, it is. Immensely so.

It's a funny thing, I thought I was basically a Romantic and later, anything pre-Eroica a bit too well-mannered for me. How naive.

Symphonies like Mozart 40 and 41, Haydn 48 (one of your favourites) and 104 now give me as much pleasure as my old warhorses Brahms 3, Bruckner 7, Schumann 2, Schubert 9 et al. But I think I had to get to the Classicals through the Romantics - Brahms and co. had to open my ears so that I would learn that the earlier stuff doesn't altogether conform to my mental image of well-mannered salon music. And you've played a role in all this, so thank you!

 

Dear Bernard, Thank you very much for the funny and helpfull review, Wulfie would loved it.

 

St. Bernard,  May I appropriate this nomenclature? A most generous review. I rate Brendel as the founding member of Narcoleptics Anonymous, that rare breed of pianist who can take the most monumental works i'the repertoire and induce slumber. Paul 'Hypnos' Lewis is another. The saying goes: you snooze, you lose. Not when these two are playing. More felicity anon, Throppers

 

Marvellous imaginative writing in a review. This man can really write in a poetic fashion and understands philosophy. R

 

 

Dear Bernard, thanks for your comprehensive review, to which I have nothing of value to add except kudos to you for writing it. I've been looking for the set for some time but the asking prices have been forbidding, until I had the fortune of finding all of Haebler's Mozart Philips recordings in a Korean box edition, coupled with her Schubert recordings. The remastering seems to be the same. As in the Denon recording of the sonatas she shines and displays depths that elude the competition. In the Andantino of K. 271 she lets us follow her into sentiments that only are touched upon in other recordings I've heard. Frightening and magnificent. Thanks again for leading me to the pot at the end of the rainbow, it was indeed real and filled with gold.

Best wishes

Peter

 

Haha, wonderful reviews! I may not always agree on musical grounds, but they certainly are a joy to read. Please keep up the good work.

 

Bernard, you know I'm an incurable devotee of your reviews. But I've never understood your objection to curly hair on conductors. Can you hear it in the music? Does it apply to pianists as well, or petrol station attendants? Please explain!

 

Thanks for a very witty and enjoyable review of a lovely disc.

 

Have followed the last couple of series reviews with my usual blend of stalking / reverence and will share thoughts in more detail soon Bernard - thanks as ever for the best free entertainment since I was a teenager.

 

Another generous and clobberific review, BMOH (clobberific? Sorry, liquid lunch). If it wends its way into your orbit, lend an ear to Cristian Mandeal's cycle with the Cruj-Napoca orchestra. The 8th is a high;ight.

 

Brilliant review made me guffaw - agree with your comments about SIR Jeggy - if you don't mind. I would have given him 4 stars though as it is a good performance though he should have never made this recording and try to improve on perfection. For the same reason maybe that Rostropovich never recorded the Elgar as he considered his pupil Jacqueline duPre's performance to be so good that he had nothing to add.

 

Bernard is it that you are valiantly searching for a long undiscovered Abbado - BPO offering of acceptable quality or klang. Or is it that it is a penance of the Australian Kna hierarchy to keep inflicting Abbado on yourself as your expectations are never achieved and your comments are unfailingly filled with more disappointment. In any event I enjoy your comments hugely and keep in touch with your never ending search.

Kind regards from a Herbie fanatic in Kent.

 

 

I got the reference to Heart of Darkness but much else was beyond me. You'll have to start giving footnotes for your dimmer readers. But I enjoyed the... what's the word ... superabundant imagination. Thanks.

 

 

Bernard, if there was a button for most amusing, imaginative, poetic and sometimes off the wall, you'd be number one. You offer poetic insight while others give us prose.

 

Bernard, I have been HOWLING with laughter over your Simon Rattle takedown.  Thank you for a much-needed series of laughs today.  I had a particularly tough day at work, and honestly, your review really helped me not get taken down as badly as the day's events would have it.  So thank you for the gift of humor.  And man, you are FUNNY!

 

Dear Bernard. Gratulations for introducing this new form of reviewing musical reviews from other sources via Amazon. That is really innovative. Thank you. I read the NYT article a few month ago. Abstracted: the NYT informs me that they are not able or not willing to inform me about the actual event. This is a very interesting way to fill empty pages with nothing.

 

 

When I stumbled upon the aforementioned NY Times "review"/"dialogue"/Whatever the Hell It Was during an online search earlier this year, my first thought (after recovering from a mini-stroke occasioned by reading so much utter nonsense about Bruckner in one place) was, I can't wait to read Bernard Michael O'Hanlon's reaction! to this! And lo and behold, Bernard has obliged in a way that exceeds my hopes and expectations. Chapeau, sir!

 

I'm going to read this aloud to Mrs D, who was equally appalled but of course not surprised by the twaddle published in that august journal, The Old Gray Lady. In the meantime, add my name to those of Messrs Haverstock & Haydn Fan in this affair.

 

Principessa of the Ivory Tower of Sheer Lunacy, thy name is Corrinna de Fonseca-Wollheim. (Happily I've forgotten the name of her partner in that benighted "dialogue." ) By the way, I had tickets to a couple of Barenboim's Bruckner concerts at Carnegie Hall but was forced to absent myself due to a case of acute bronchitis. Probably a fortuitous illness--it allowed me to enjoy, instead, several evenings of listening to some of these Karajan recordings in the comfort of my own home.

 

Really witty and funny review. Brilliant.

I am just an Opera neophyte so your ability to inter-compare and reflect is deeply impressive...love the closing Stafford poem. Again, damn brilliant.

 

Worthy of Juvenal  A Masterpiece! Save that review! If the Hipsters had an enemies list, you'd be their most wanted man.

Like John Dillinger, you're all alone at the top!

(Fortunately the FBI is not involved in such disputes!)

 

 

 

I just wanted to tell you how much I *love* reading your reviews.  Of late I've found myself howling with laughter, this evening after reading your review of Norrington's Brahms 3&4, and the Abbado/Pollini Beethoven 5.  You can be side-splittingly funny!  I'll admit, I don't have a classics background as you do so most of your references go completely over my head.  Yet in spite of my inability to fully comprehend them, the gist of you arguments come through loud and clear.  You have the best set of ears of any other reviewer I've seen on Amazon, and I've learned to trust your opinions.  We rarely disagree (except in the case of the Giulini B9, in which, frankly, you're just wrong!  hahahaha)

 

Bernard, your creative reveiws are always a delight to read. I absolutely concur with your positive view of this recording - and, of course, of the Richter (why do singers like those no longer exist today?). But, though I share your dislike of the HIPster brigade, who seem to manage to trivialise Bach and take all the religious fervour out of his music

 

Bernard: You are a scream! Your writing gave me a good chuckle and I thank you for that.

Cheers,

 

You review made me laugh out loud! I couldn't concur more. I'm envious of your writing gift and wish I had that ability.

 

I always love your reviews even where I disagree. I had the "Road to Toronto" experience many decades ago and have not turned back. However, I can understand why any listener might detest GG's highly personal style, in Bach as well as other composers. To my ears (and eyes, when I view one of the many video recordings of concerts and interviews--some great ones on U-Tube), Gould's pianistic virtuosity was astonishing--almost unapproachable. I also find that his playing is deeply expressive (Mozart excepted, of course), perhaps even expressionistic. Gould did have a heart as well as a brain. In any case, I shall have to audition this Salzburg concert version of the Goldbergs to see if it lives up to your accolade. Your quote from T.S. Eliot was apt and welcome!

Appreciation, as always—

 

 

Wonderful review and a lot closer to the truth than Rattle's vomit-inducing fan club and sycophantic critis will acknowledge (the same goes for Kaufmann's disgusting 'Das Lied von der Erde' - sings all the parts because he knows better than the composer how he wanted his music performing). Thank goodness someone else can see through the Rattle phenomenon now for what it really is. Of late we have had mediocre (or worse) performances the sycophantic critics will praise to the skies for fear of upsetting St Simon and lose their freebies and the fan club will buy irrespective of its quality.

 

Bernard, I would like to selfishly profit from you encyclopaedic erudition. Do you remember who said the immortal words, roughly, that there are no difficult piano pieces: they are either easy or impossible? I can't for the life of me do...I actually underestimated your knowledge. Encyclopaedias are by definition superficial, which you're not.

 

I take Bernard's substantive points with a pinch of salt. He deserves credit for injecting wit and pugilism into a dialectic that's oft lost in insipid diplomacy. Bernard's contributions are actually entertaining and erudite. I'm no partisan returning to many HIP accounts including Gardner's but if Bernard can bend listeners to a more romantic cannon all the better.

 

 

Brilliant. And more informational than most reviews.

 

Quinton, I will tell you that I've personally found the taste of our man Bernard nearly infallible; however, in this case I'm astonished to say I have no idea what he is talking about. This EMI Six has much bluster and pretense, but is merely a Karajanesque charade, guilty of self-importance and vacuous at the core. The Sixth from 1975 is the trip to Hell Bernard suggests this is, turbulent and terrifying. The last movement will melt flesh from bone. As I say, Bernard has the most natural, exquisite palette I think I've found here, barring that he has yet to catch on to Brahms and evidently straighten out Karajan's Tchaikovsky. Perhaps it's merely a case of jumbling the CDs/tracks? Peace. Bernard-my love.

 

 

You review made me laugh out loud! I couldn't concur more. I'm envious of your writing gift and wish I had that ability.

 

Mr. O'Hanlon

I have been reading quite a few of your reviews recently, particularly those of the Haydn Symphonies. I have as a result reaquired the Dorati sets 60-71 & 72-83, and have spent much of my listening time the past two weeks with them and Fischer's recordings of 21-81. I have for many years loved the Paris & London Symphonies (+ 88 & 92), but repeated listens to the earlier works leads to a greater appreciation for many of them as well.

I must say that not only do I find your reviews consistently informative, but also the most entertaining of all the Amazon reviewers with whom I am familiar.

Your concise descriptions of Lang Lang and Harnoncourt is priceless - and spot on!

Thanks for your postings, and I'll be keeping an eye on your review site for more!

 

Wonderful piece, Bernard. Dangerously funny. One could laugh hard enough to fall off the chair (I almost did). For the record, I cannot stand Brendel's Liszt (the one for Philips anyway, the early sessions for Vox have their moments), and these video recordings easily rank among the worst memories of my unfortunate youth.

 

Your review of the Birds was top drawer! No one - and I mean NO ONE - on Amazon writes more incisive or funnier reviews.

 

Hi Bernard, just a quick nod of serious approval for your review of this CD - bought it on the strength of your encomium, and am just finished listening to it on a gloriously sunny morning in London, open-mouthed and with jaw on floor... which I think proved that your review located every relevant nail and gave it a good tap on the bonce. Thank you! Have an excellent Sunday –

 

What a fantastic review! What opulent prose!

 

Really appreciate your efforts in identifying the remaster versions. I have been looking for this information since I bought this set a couple of years ago. I personally feel the Brahms here sounded somewhat different from the OIBP. Anyway, your bit comparison is excellent!

 

Incomparable review Bernard. Great music, like great literature, never stops startling us.

 

 

Hi, Bernard.

Though in my last sixties, I cannot escape the insistent appeals of Zeitgeist (or maybe I should say "market pressures", I am a bit hesitant about that).

The point is that I not always share your vision and tastes. It should perhaps be some hyperboles that separate us, for I am not English speaker. Just by way of illustration, I would tell you that I cannot apply a warlike alternative (fight or play) to any performance of Bach. But believe me, I greatly appreciate your courage to swim against a sweeping stream - call it HIP or what you will. Mellivora capensis not only symbolizes the nature of Kna and his loyalty to himself. It really ought appear on your own coat of arms.

Go ahead. Enjoying your reviews beyond any eventual agreement (and learning in addition some sparkling English) opens new realms for some of us.

 

 

But I should post these comments elsewhere, not here. I sometimes have trouble understanding your humor, but generally find your reviews delightfully free of the orthodoxies that prevail among professional and amateur reviewers alike.

 

Bernard ~ The tragedy here is on a smaller scale than that Oppenheimer was envisioning. Still, the point is made in your usual erudite and entertaining fashion. A disc to be avoided.

 

 

As always, Bernie, your use of language, imagery and humor make a wonderful read, thanks.

 

Brilliant. And more informational than most reviews. "Monet in the Microwave" - that's an awesomely aliterative admonition.

 

Yes it would seem we have many tastes in common. In my comments attending your review of the Karajan Bach, I failed to mention that as I read it I laughed so violently I managed to cause disturbance and mayhem in my immediate vicinity. It was funny as only the recognition of truth is funny. There is something of heavy tactical machinery in K's Bach but that analogy had never occurred to me until your review. Thank you for making my day!

 

 

Hi Bernard, I think in your physical, emotional and spiritual exhaustion after enduring The Man-Perm's Schumann, you accidentally gave it 5 stars instead of...?

Have a large glass of wine to recover...!!

James.

Really? Oh for goodness' sake - your reviews are always the first I make a bee-line for, not just because they're always funny, erudite and perceptive, but also because they're usually more or less on the money.  The barbarians are clearly at the gates!!

 

 

Mr. O'Hanlon, your spot-on review and delectably snide asides made me laugh aloud as I haven't since first reading E. F. Benson and the Mitfords. Sir Butt has garroted many 18th/19th century works, but the Requiem is by far his most throttling. The lack of empathy for this latest entry is one of the worst post-HIP monstrosities I've heard to date. Keep on truckin' and chuckin' my man...a gallon of lager awaits you should we ever gather over wine, wimmin and musick.

 

This has to be the most colourful of classical music CD reviews at Amazon that I have ever read! Well done!

 

Thank you Bernard! This took me back to when I was 15 and heard K. 310 being played by Lipatti, awakening a yearning for meaning in my life. Now, in the fog of war of life I realise that I found a large chunk at that moment. Youn makes it palpable again.

 

This is the most self centered, quasi literary fluff put to pen by Bernard Michael O'Hanlon to date. Omit 3 of 4 paragraphs and we could have had a well written and honest review. Mr. O'Hanlon comes inches away from falling into the abyss of a literary pool of quicksand. And as always, he manages to come away fully intact. I suppose we are neither better or worse for it. I guess the real reason for my passive aggressive comments is this. I tend to agree with Mr. O'Hanlon's assessment of this tempered and slightly flat rendition of two very well written pieces of music. Truth is, I waited for over three weeks to receive this CD only to be disappointed. Then to add salt on my wounds. Here comes Bernard Michael O'Hanlon with his devil-may-care literary prose and verbalization the likes of which very few men can match. Thank you Mr. O'Hanlon, thanks for nothin !

 

 

I was searching for your old review of the Vivaldi bassoon concerti and stumbled upon this posting of yours. I can understand better your fascination with the Prom and the posting has cemented the desire to return for a longer period and attempt some of the hikes (with proper equipment and clothing, this time!). Your writing is gripping and funny, much like your reviews.

Hello again Bernard, glad to get your latest consignment of Amazon reviews, I wish you were being paid for that prose. Care to catch up next week in CBD when schools close for holidays? Regards, Rob.

 

As for your review, very good as usual. Naturally as you write so well and have your own style many do not understand, it is a pity that you do not do so well in the rankings.

 

Lindell Peter says: Thanks Bernard for enabling me to add this solid brick to my otherwise crumbling faith in existential momentum. Sort of keeps me going. We're approaching something resembling summer here, which would be what you call winter. Be well and please keep the reviews coming, always a gold mine.

Best wishes!

 

Less fun though!

I love BOH's reviews! It's like the Monty Python or HHGTTG of Classical Music

Best Wishes

David D

 

Dear Bernard - On a positive note - your recent review on the Beethoven Concertos was a masterpiece. I think your reviews deserve some sort of high recognition - Maybe I'll invent a new reward - call it - The Juvenal Award - Best Put Down of a Hipster.

Bernard,I saw a video of Anja Harteros sing the 4 Last Songs with Jansons conducting. I found her work mesmerizing. I had a cassette

of a SF Orchestra broadcast w/ Eisabeth Söderström that I lost somehow. It was wonderful. Lucia Popp's video w/ Solti is also a great piece of singing. I heard Fleming live in 1988, and the vocalism was opulent. Around 1972-73 I heard Giulini conducting  the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Leontyne Price. I don't remember much other than the sound was so beautiful I had to look away from the stage to keep the tears in check. Price had an incredible dress and her aristocratic afro. The CSO was in love w. Giulini then, and the excerpts from Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet were played in a transcendental fashion, especially the oboe solos from the great Ray Still, who was hired by Dr. Reiner, an assistant to Richard Strauss, to bring this rambling paragraph full

circle. Your reviews are delightful. Do you do any writing for which you receive compensation? Do you wear your hair like Hans Knappertsbusch?

Best wishes, Richard Zimdars, Athens, Georgia, USA

 

Mr. O'Hanlon, Always happy when I see a review of yours praising a particular CD as I have learned through experience that you have very fine taste in classical music (though we disagree about the merits of Herr Mahler - I certainly do not hold that against you as he is not everyone's pint of lager). Keep posting and keep that sense of humor.

 

Well, Bernard, after a too-lengthy hiatus post surgeon's knife I must say that it's lovely to hear from you again on whatever brucknerian subject concerns Australo-Knappertsbuschians these days. Nevertheless and especially therefor, I plan to give DB3 a sympathetic, even enthusiastic, listen -- after immediate purchase -- for at least three reasons: (1) as I have endeavored to remind you now and then, we do not live in the Age of Anton nor that of Herr Knappy and his fellow defunct Dritte Reich-Genossen; (2) only a conductor who understands and loves the music of Elliott Carter can possibly conduct Anton's stuff well in the world we do live in (i.e., with the proper object of making that music 'connect' with us in our world rather than ossify prettily in an embalmer's paradise museum of Habsburg antiquities); and (3), DB's stewardship of the Berliner Staatskapellers has been tonic cure to their lethargic recent past, salvaging their status as important -- indeed necessary -- guardians of a forward-looking teutonic cultural patrimony. As Juergen Habermas could put it: 'them's the whats what makes the kitties claw ... else it's just rehash(e)d Kna!' Toodles!Always good to read your stuff!

 

I remember reading this review some time ago and laughing hysterically (not least from the truth of it - although I do enjoy many of Jeggy's recordings). It is very clever. I have always had a fondness for eccentrics. Many whom I've met turned out to have excellent character - could be a pattern. Agree or disagree, it does make reading reviews a bit more interesting than the same adjectives, standard format, and patterns again and again and again. I happen to agree with many of O'Hanlon's reviews on recordings. Our tastes are mostly simpatico.

 

Good grief, Bernard, you seem authorially tireless. I could never produce copy at anything like the rate you do on Amazon. Only sorry that such creativity isn't being remunerated.

Bernard,

A quick line to wish you the very best for Christmas and the New Year, to thank you for the laughter and, along with your comrade-in-arms the eloquent Mr Ralph Moore, the wisdom of your very informative reviews on a subject which, it is clear, means a great deal to you both. The prayer of St. Francis bids us to bring light where there is darkness and, in your very unique way Bernard, you answer this call. Happy Christmas.

All my best  Mick

 

Brilliant and eloquent review - last summer this was probably the first of your serious reviews I had read (mainly I had seen your HIPster war communiqués and been rather puzzled) and it convinced me to try this set. I had previously lumped Pinky in with the lush-tone-minimal-phrasing style of Perlman (and usually that's still what I find) but this is playing of astonishing expressivity. Since then I have rediscovered expression in music - no exaggeration, since I had been a HIPster - and spent vast sums on your recommended Karajan recordings (among others). Long may you continue to write (even if only Amazoo reviews) and convert the HIPsters! Also, further to those last points: if you are not a charioteer in the publicity branch of Pharaoh's army, your linguistic skills are not being optimally utilized. Again: bravo, sir. And thank you.

 

Hi Bernard -  Wanted to wish you a Happy Easter before your day gets too far gone - the old International Date Line! Your most recent reviews have gone up in quality and particularly in intensity - quite something to behold. I hope you can soon dial the fervor back a bit on somewhat less cataclysmic music for some necessary contrast. No one should feel like Sylvia Plath for very long!

 

I don't know how or why, but I just stumbled across your 2010 blog and have spent the last hour or so pissing myself laughing. I don't recognise your name or your face from your posted drama show pictures, but clearly you recall me and my mates from the 1982 cohort of WFC. So much of what you wrote was exactly as I recall things. Unlike you, I hated being at school and have long lamented the lost opportunity that being in a positive, encouraging, enthusiastic environment could have provided. Regardless, it was the humour and irreverence which I liked and you have captured it perfectly in your blog. You've got a great ability, and thanks for being responsible for providing me with such amusement. Btw I don't recognise Steff, nor recall the fight in the locker room that you recounted but am sure that your observation must be wrong; I've never lost on points!

 

CheersI've read several of Bernard's reviews and they are amazing. They aren't just funny but come from a point of view that, though obviously biased, has enormous passion and knowledge about music.

 

Yes, mostly. I've just looked over all your reviews. You seem to have depth, independence, and an aversion to routine, like Santa Fe Listener. Where I part company with both of you as that you two seem to think that Karajan retained his credentials as a musician, and as human being, even after 1965. That said, your enthusiasm for his last Beethoven #8 was in line with other reviews so I will give it a try. BTW, I'm the guy who complained a few days ago about your calling Karajan "Herbie" but that wasn't to defend him, just a general stand for civilization and formality. Lastly, you seem to have more experience with the Bible and antique literati than most folks these days, even quoting Rabbi Akiva. Impressive for a guy with a distinctly Irish surname!

 

Thanks for your reviews.Sir, your turn of phrase is unparalleled in my experience. This review is a work of art. Bravo!

 

BM‏  demons1965 Bernard a forum worthy of your greatness awaits you on @twitter . Carpe diem!

At first I thought you had issues, but soon learned you're simply intolerant of mediocrity...and an author of merit. Now I look for your Mozart reviews and heed them well. If you can hear me, I'm wondering what you think of K.364 Kantorow on Denon?

 

I couldn't disagree more with the reviewer's rating for this film. I was about to make a comment most likely utilising an unsavoury epithet which might, no doubt, have lead to a stern ticking off from amazon and an official warning.

And yet, on re-reading this review, I can't help but think there is something admirable, something approaching genius, in writing a review of a frothy, romantic Hollywood musical, when three quarters of that review refers to the Arch of Constantine and it's place in the history of Roman art in Late Antiquity. It almost takes my breath away.

I disagree. I think this film deserves five stars but what a unique review!

 

 

Just like my self, Bernard only accepts a single higher power. His name is Melchizedek. He is the only one who tells us what to do, what to admire, and what to despise. His authority is infinite. And we mostly ignore him. Bernard is what Bernard writes. And no matter how one may disagree with him, nobody gets any worse from imbibing his well crafted prose. Amazon gives its visitors the option to vote a review as helpful or not. Of course, this has degenerated into 'do you agree with this review, or not', especially since those who write helpful reviews, i.e. those who are most likely to promote sales, get rewarded.

 

Long live an anti-zeitgeist contrarian with a well informed cultural compass!

I think that chastisement should be coming your way for your humorous, colorful but also highly disrespectful reviews. Referring to von Karajan as "Herbie", James Levine as "big Jim" when the conductor is now confined to a wheelchair, John Eliot Gardiner as "Jegy" and the late Claudio Abbado as "Uncle Claudio" is highly disrespectful. These men have devoted their lives to music with utter commitment and devotion. A critical review is fine. Save low talk for the kitchen table. Our society already has enough meanness and lack of manners to go around. You are an excellent writer with a vivid prose wed to great imagination. It is a pity that human kindness, respect and decorum are lacking.

 

What a beautifully articulate smear job.

 

Johannes Climacus says:

Bernie,

 

A wonderful review, arguably your best on this website. You say exactly what needs to be said and do so with precision and eloquence. And you manage to get in an allusion to my favorite poet. I have owned and enjoyed this set for many years. The rich, diaphanous sounds of the BPO under its greatest conductor since Furtwangler: what's not to love? Well, maybe the minuets could do with a bit more bite (Szell is my paradigm), and Jochum conveys an altogether remarkable brio in every one of the "London" set. And of course Beecham conveys that inimitable, twinkling wit of which he alone seems to have held the secret. But Karajan is not too far behind those Haydn luminaries. Comparatively, do you prefer his Londons over his Paris Symphonies or vice versa? Critics differ on their relative merits. I go back and forth, but lately view the London set has having the edge; Karajan's predilection for majesty and nobility of utterance fit better with those later works (Bernstein's *Bear* will always be one of my all-time favorite Haydn recordings, as well as his 87). And others (Ansermet, Marriner, even Dorati) have done better with *La Reine*, 84 and 86 than Karajan. Karajan's 83, too, seems to merit the charge of inflation. But anyone coming to any of these works for the first time would find Karajan very engaging indeed. So, as always, comparative judgments can keep us from appreciating what is before our eyes, or ears, at the moment. Happy New Year! –JC

 

Bernard, I insist: bundle your Amazon reviews and publish them!You create matter to balance the Gramophone's anti-matter. Norrington's Beethoven cycle and Borges' "The writing of the God", what other mind could have ever brought them together? Minimally informed even Acy knows that Borges' Jaguar is actually the Leopard that Dante encountered before his entrance into Inferno. Awesome! Wouldn't it be great to let Borges speak the final judgement on this despicable set? "That is why, lying in the darkness, I allow the days to forget me." Cheers! Pathetically, I found myself hugging my chest with delight when I read this stitch-up. We are not alone.

 

as someone who spent an interminable three years reading his son to sleep nightly with Thomas books AND who panned the Gardiner set elsewhere on Amazon, I can only say this is the best review I have read on this forum in a couple of years.

 

Congratulations on your review that besides being extremely witty and creative, is right on the money.

 

Very clever, very witty, very wrong. It is obvious from his deep understanding of Mozart's sonatas that Gould did not hate Mozart's piano compositions, whatever he might have said in order to provoke people to think, and not to automatically accept the conventional, so called "correct" way of playing them. There is rarely one "correct" interpretation of a musical masterpiece. To properly understand one it has to be heard in many different interpretations. We should be thanking Gould for showing us something other than the saccharine version that most other pianists give us.

 

Nobody but you could have written this. You crack me up.

Bernard,

Since you gave me permission to "maul" your Bruckner reviews, here goes: When I read this I laughed until I cried! Why this man was ever allowed to record his perverse interpretations of Bruckner is beyond me. When I first popped this disc into my player I thought, "Is he drunk"? After listening to the whole thing, I wanted to get drunk. Thanks for this.

Gray

 

Ok, Mr. O'Hanlon, I know wit when I see it flashing, even in these benighted commercial precincts. What is there that entitles you to have more of it than evolution has seen fit to vouchsafe to the rest of us ham-handed, slack-jawed, mouth-breathing scribblers? I can see that for mirth, insight, and that certain je ne sais quois, I will have to look no farther than your reviews. I can only say, "Eximious."

Thanks, haven't laughed so hard in weeks. Best review on Amazon IMHO!!

 

This is almost too witty and astute for an Amazon review. Very funny, and very accurate.

Hi Bernard,

Recent but avid reader, first time caller. Not even slightly interetsted in Kna doing Bruckner but I'll read your review! Love your work, especially when I disagree with you because a) it's always good to think again isn't it, b) you make me laugh and c) we don't want to live in a Penguin Guide world. Still very fond of my Jeggy (sorry) recording of this (which I reckon has dated better than many of his) but was intrigued by the curbing of your wit and reverential tone in this review. So I bought it and realised that it is because t is a totally disarming recording. Just so much loveliness without trying hard and Cotrubas left me trembling like the time I found myself on a train past Glenferrie when I was in year nine and a whole crowd of MLC girls crammed on and I was stuck against all their tanned legs from their Noosa holidays and I didn't move a muscle lest the spell be broken. But in a much more spiritual way of course. She is divine. 
Not sure why the choir, for all their lovely sound, is so afraid of consonants though.  

 

Alexander Arsov says:

Lovely review. Much as I disagree with just about everything (except for Kleiber being overrated), I love your style, Bernard. Grand yet intimate, appreciative yet with a welcome touch of irreverent humour. Great stuff.

Brilliant. And more informational than most reviews.

I often quote your sublime reviews to friends when trying to describe the appeal of Haydn's quartets. Now I can do the same with Mozart. Thank you.

 

Greetings Bernard! Haven't been on here much lately, but I just wanted to say that I think you are a very gifted writer. I always enjoy your reviews. You and others have taught me much about orchestral music and the recordings thereof for I am eternally grateful. I think your sense of humor is profound and artful and I feel bad for people who take this stuff too seriously. It is all in good fun.

I would like to wish you and everyone at the AKA a very Merry Christmas from the great state of NY- Be Well Dude!

Raymond Clarke says:

POLICE COMMISSIONER GORDON: "Terrible news Batman - the joker is back and has gained control of the Amazon website!"

 

BATMAN: "Indeed; Boy Wonder told me that this review by Amazon's most-feared literary terrorist has been available online for over a month, posing a grave threat to conventional musical criticism. If read widely it could result in humour becoming rampant over the entire website. The Amazon censor has made no attempt to remove this dastardly piece of writing. I fear this could mean ... "

 

ROBIN: "Holy crap Batman, you mean ... "

 

BATMAN: "Indeed, Robin, I mean that Amazon itself could be in league with the joker, who has been allowed to upload similar reviews elsewhere. To the Batmobile!!!"

 

ANNOUNCER: "Can our heroes track down Bernard? Will conventional music reviewing be restored? Has Brendel taken offence? Find out next week!"

 

 

 

 

Hello Bernard

 

Since you have provided an email address on your Amazon profile, I thought that I'd drop you a line (so as not to upset your detractors with 'comments that provide nothing to the 'discussion' in hand!).

To be honest, I merely wished to thank you for the reviews that must take you some considerable time to compose; though Lord, I am so glad that you do! I don't give two hoots for the detractors...but I do hoot; often. I don't think that you've ever failed to put a smile upon my lips and you've caused me to laugh out loud frequently'; not bad for a total stranger, me thinks.

I've been known to do so in a supermarket checkout queue when boredom allows me to luxuriate in a wandering mind which as often as not is still considering which musical compilation should be the next addition to my fast growing classical library; a matter for which I've had to wait for the children (we have six) to grow up and leave home so that I have the space, if not necessarily always the cash since Grandchildren take just as much of that as the kids did (do) when they were young. In these 'me time' moments (I have a special needs daughter, turning twenty a few days before Christmas, so 'me time' is taken whenever and wherever I can get it!), in my 'deliberations' I often find myself thinking about your cleverly crafted reviews. Thus far, your spoof 'Thomas the Tank Engine' remains one of my favourites, along with your 'meeting' of dear ol' Herbie vK himself. This latter did in fact end in my purchasing the set, on behalf of my husband to give to me, this Christmas!

 

Whether you like it or not, this HvK Beethoven cycle is sure to be associated with you in my mind, regardless that we don't know one another from Adam. When it arrived (along with a few other sets I also purchased on behalf of Hubby...well, he hates all things classical so he needs the 'guidance'), I did actually think 'Ah! Bernard's set...' when removing it from the packaging!

 

Anyway; enough rambling. As I've said above; this email was merely to offer you my thanks for the fun snippets of entertainment that you provide. Long may you continue to do so! Please know that you have a newbie member to your 'fan club' over here in the UK. I'm with some of the others; your reviews should be bound in a book!

 

Have a good day. I'm going to steal a few moments out of mine (excuse being 'I'm poorly'...and I'm sticking to it!) to read some more of your writing that I haven't yet got around to!

 

Good to hear from you this morning.  Over breakfast we were just enjoying the the Lothar Koch Mozart Serenades that you recommended, which arrived yesterday.  My wife is a professional cellist and was really struck by them.

 

I'm glad I can return the favour of laughter--your wide-ranging demolition work is a constant pleasure for me, and your recommendations explore places that no other commentators seem to reach.  I continue to learn from them.  And so far nothing you have recommended has been a disappointment, which is more than I can say for any other reviewer, even Ralph.  Perhaps the Old Firm confers a degree of infallibility.

 

Paradoxically I was grateful to you for unearthing that trove of impotent reviews by the dodderer from Ventura.  I had fun with them.  Withal, he was trying to channel Shakespeare, forsooth, and as someone who taught Shakespeare at university level for 25 years I had an additional layer of Schadenfreude.

 

Speaking of Schadenfreude and the Stalker, we watched the Presidential debate last night.  No surprises, either good or bad, alas. With all good wishes Arthur

T Mortimer7

Thanks - my review of a review has been quoted. The C21st has truly arrived ... Bernard's "work" to me represents the height of criticism. It is first & foremost, entertaining in itself, & often hilarious.  It is wonderful to know that even a potential stinker of a record can be redeemed by the entertainment value of reading one of his reviews of it.

He has a voice that lends meaning & context & value to a review such as this (albeit one that needs establishing through repetition, & in that respect, Amazon may not be the most 'appropriate' platform, but it ultimately i thinks just lends the discovery of this 'body' of work even more pathos... anyway, i digress...), even when no commentary is being passed upon the actual details of the recording at all. This transcends "reviewing", it is criticism in a wider sense, it is informed dialogue with the audience that assumes their intelligence, rather than their ignorance. It is to be applauded & celebrated.

 

But the "sealer" here is that at it's best, Bernard's "reviews" DEMAND that the recording be heard. It leaves you feeling that to NOT hear this recording would be a tragedy, because if the experience is anything like what he describes so eloquently, it is surely one not to be missed. I even listened to a Bruckner 5 he recommended simply to find out if it truly was as COMICAL as he made it out to be... I don't think i would have bothered otherwise.

 

This is how I felt reading the NME when I was a teenager. It excites me about music. I'm not here to have my opinions reinforced, because in many cases, i simply do not know this music well enough to have an opinion. But with all the dour talk of 'audience outreach & development' that goes on around this music & the people & organisations that make it, let me tell you that 1 O Hanlon will do more than 100 focus groups & committees for generating excitement & interest in a wider audience & whatever might have been written about Brendel (for example) in the past, it is commentary such as this that actually envigorates me to perhaps listen to more of his recordings now in a way that i have a specific, articulate line of enquiry within which to invest & direct my own listening.

 

I may well to this point have taken Brendel's ubiquity to imply a 'definitiveness' to his interpretation in Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert et al. I now not only know this may not be the case, i am informed, & most importantly, ENVIGORATED, to discover otherwise, in a way that no number of yawn inducing platitudes will ever achieve.

 

I now return daily to read his reviews. I would love to see them blogged & archived in a more readily searchable format.

jrmoran says:

Bernard - I find it quite extraordinary how many people reading these reviews are completely lacking a sense of humor, show no appreciation for wit and erudition, seek only reinforcement of their own opinion, and react with scorn and hostility. 

For those of us who do appreciate your uniqueness, don't let the buggers get you down.

 

Another classic from BMO. I don't know what's more funny: Your reviews or the humorless, uptight, "take-themselves-waaay-too-seriously" twits that disapprove of your antics. Keep up the fine work.

 

At first I thought you had issues, but soon learned you're simply intolerant of mediocrity...and an author of merit. Now I look for your Mozart reviews and heed them well. If you can hear me, I'm wondering what you think of K.364 Kantorow on Denon?

 

Dear Bernard - Your review of the Birds was top drawer! No one - and I mean NO ONE - on Amazon writes more incisive or funnier reviews. Did the kids also see the giant croc? Is he a Saltwater behemoth or fresh water?  Anyway - I hope to heaven you're not so modest as to not be saving these delightful pieces - we on the outside can only go so far into your heart of darkness reviews before Amazon closes the jungle to deeper traffic.

Putting them on a couple backups would be ever so prudent.

The advertiser on the original broadcast of The Flood was Breck Shampoo. My father's firm did the PR on the program. I had the original LP with the red cover and a glued on advertisement of a woman with long luxurious hair. It was a freebee from the company.

 

In the late 40s, Theodor Adorno's Philosophy of New Music came out. The book has lots of nice things to say about Schoenberg and terrible things about Stravinsky. The Russian neo-classical composer ultimately beat the German serialists at their own game. The Flood is hard going. But on the other side of the LP there was a recording of Stravinsky's Mass, a piece written before Stravinsky turned serial. It is a beautiful work. If you are going to try it, stick to Reinbert de Leeuw. The choral singing on the Karel Ancerl recording is somewhat Slavic, but fervent. Ancerl and his singers believe! Bernstein uses a boy trebles, which might get your hackles up. I haven't heard the Colin Davis since sometime in the 70s. I won't comment the Stravinsky/Craft recording of my childhood. I am unfamiliar with more recent recordings.

 

I am a big fan of your reviews, Mr. O'Hanlon. It is probably wrong of me to want to get you to hear late Stravinsky differently, but I would like to point out to you, as a member of the Old Firm, that the desert does have its spiritual usages. Paul of Thebes and the followers of Anthony would feel most at home in late Stravinsky. Pachomius and Shenouda the Archimandrite, Athanasius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom would know that the desert is the place where we are most close to God and to demons, just like the Australian Knappertsbusch Association. The desert is the go to place for the ascetic equivalent of skydiving into a net without a chute. It is not practical where I am to drop by the Sahara, the Gobi. Stravinsky will do in a pinch.

 

After the email exchange, I read a few pages of your reviews on Amazon before heading out and thoroughly enjoyed them. That's not why I'm writing again, though.  Curious about the person who wrote with such intelligence, I found you on LinkedIn. You used to work at Telestra, where you overlapped with my only friend in Australia, a trained musician and enormously talented woman whose photographs are on the walls of our office in NYC. I've checked, and you know each other. Lorellie and I were in the same class together at Indooroopilly High in Brisbane ages ago.

 

Ann - Most Amazon reviews are unintentionally hilarious.  I had my pompous ass remark removed by Amazon, while the reviewer's riposte to my comment - fart in a coconut shell was part of it - remains to puzzle if not amuse anyone who cares to read comments.  Which is a long way a getting around to saying how much I have enjoyed your often hilarious and never less than interesting take on various musicians (so-called it would appear in many cases).  The review titles alone are worth one star.

I shall explore Saint-Saens and Bruckner having read your reviews.

You will have noted, no doubt with satisfaction, your failure to gather many votes from hoi poloi who prefer "beautifully played and arrived promptly" reviews to your acid, acerbic, allegorical and controversial reviews.  I will not patronise them or you; everyone is entitled to their opinion (however much of a dick they may be) even the man whose humour involves farting and coconuts (in what way can that ever be funny).

 

Here's what you don't quite get, BM: I despise Christianity. It’s a death-devoted, life-loathing, guilt-slathering, hell-haunted tribal superstition. The Christian conception of God the Father is a hateful libel on humanity: omniscience as a shameful entrapment; omnipotence, as Shakespeare said, a nasty Big Boy toying with flies. Christianity has never been worthy of its own art and music, Christ the Crucified Crank is less acceptable morally than Mithra or Osiris, and less plausible than Santa Claus. I’d rather be an animist groveling before sticks and stones than a Christian. If Mozart or Bach felt bounded by Christianity, sincerely or simply apathetically, I pity them retrospectively. Their religiosity was merely a scaffold for thei musical genius. The texts of Bach’s cantatas are, as EVERY musician who loves the music has always felt, embarrassingly inferior to the music. Mozart, of course, depended on da Ponte and other librettists for his greatest, grandest works, his operas, so one can’t readily assume that the words or the dramatic events represent Mozart’s deepest philosophy, but there isn’t a trace of sniveling Christian sanctimony in any of them.

It's only the music that matters, BM. The "spirituality" you crave is degrading. Humanity is its own noblest creation. That's my belief as a "humanist." Mind you, I'm perfectly conscious that it's still a rather faulty sort of nobility but it's better than a childish bogeyman religion.

 

Well, Bernard Michael, can you honestly claim that your "Andrew" is less fatuous than the gentle Polonius Egolf or the Falstaffian Edwin? Shall I now be asked to apologize for mocking a fool, in a thread of comments on a review written by the 'zoo's most persistent mocker

 

I wanted to drop you a line to say thank you for your very entertaining but accurate reviews on some of the more recent offences that pass for classical music. We had some discussion on Amazon regarding the Butt "performance" of the Mozart Requiem - my Amazon ID is "Music Lover". I have been listening to classical music, attending concerts and collecting classical recordings all my life. I was born in the UK and lived near London and then moved to the US to Boston, so culturally I still have many outlets.

I am a bit fonder of Abbado than you seem to be but I think we have very similar views on SImon Rattle..

Hi Bernard, Thank you for your very friendly reply. I bought Herbie's EMI Tchaikovsky recordings on LP when they first came out. I then acquired a very good turntable second-hand from a friend, had it overhauled and so kept all my LPs. I finally supplemented the well worn LP recordings with a hi-res stereo download from HD Tracks, so they now have a new lease on life. Did you know they were originally recorded in quadrophonic? If only someone at EMI (or Warners) had some imagination...

 

I saw Karajan conduct only once but it was a special occasion. When England went into the EC in 1973, Karajan bought the Berlin Phil to a Winter Prom on 4th January in the Royal Albert Hall.  He conducted Beethoven 4 and 5 and they played like demons. Apparently when the orchestra gathered for a rehearsal, all he asked was for them to give him the loudest sound they could and then he let them go. That evening, the Berlin brass almost raised the roof in the final movement of the 5th. Karajan reacted to our enthusiastic applause by blowing us promenaders a kiss!

 

Now to your question. If I had the capability of restoring the Berlin Phil to something like their former glory under Karajan, maintain the dark chocolate Klang, conduct the core repertoire with profundity and relevance but provide a musical lead by balancing the classics with an interest in musical (not academic) developments, motivate record companies not to drop us, look after our established performing bases and become a real part of the local community involving not just the musical and financial elite, then I might consider being Chief Conductor. If I didn't have any qualifications I'd opt for POTUS... Dick

About a month ago I listened to a Bruckner symphony properly for the first time. And then another and another and another.  In the course of the last few weeks of tracking down and listening to different recordings I have come across a number of your Amazon reviews and enjoyed them - as I have some of your other recent reviews which I then looked up via your profile (esp the one about Mozart's letters).  It is very nice to be caused to laugh out loud while learning about new things from someone who is both knowledgeable and passionate about them.  So, this is a short email of appreciation from another Amazon user on the other side of the globe. No need for a reply.   Best wishes, Harriet London

 

Mr. O’Hanlon,

 

I am amongst the great number of Amazon customers who enjoy the consistent creativity and informative quality of your rev iews. I’ve just heard the last movement of the Karajan ’44 Bruckner Symphony 8 as an extra on the Arkadia recorded set of the live 1967 Salzburg Bruckner 8 which also includes a wonderful 1952 live recording of the Bruckner Te Deum with the Vienna Symphony and the Chor des  Singverein de Gesellschaft der Musikfreude. At first I thought Arkadia had gotten the date wrong since the war time recording sounded better by far than the 67 performance. Then, I read your review and the various comments and other reviews.

Though I’m “bathing” in von Karajan recordings (the DG 1960s and 1970s as well as all but 2 of the Warner/EMI sets and some of the operas whose performances of his I had rejected out of hand.), I approached the 1944 performance with great trepidation despite all that I’ve read about apolitical and no post-war prejudices, working hand-in-hand with Legge and British interviewers and authors from Osborne to Gramophone’s critics. And most revelatory are Bruno Walter’s “good old Karl” (Böhm), Klemperer’s collegial friendship with Karajan and most of all the end of the Jürgen Otten’s interview with Thomas Brandis. But still a quote in a von Karajan autobiography written with another author, of course, “Of course I was a Nazi. We were all Nazis.” These are deeply seated feelings that I’m being honest about because I’m trying to reconcile them with one revelatory performance after another from these commemorative sets. At any event, I also applaud any efforts on the part of those commenting on your review in their quests. With respect, Joseph Levin | Lead Operator | Corporate Real Estate Solutions | Creative Services | Computer Graphics

 

Hi Bernard. I have to thank you profusely, as you have quite literally introduced me to Bruckner. I read your review of Karajan’s 7th in late 2014 (The SACD reissue of the EMI recording) and simply had to hear this music on the strength of your writing alone. Keith Jarrett has stated that he feels that the difference between jazz and classical musicians; is that the classical musician does not emerge changed by their performance. Well, this music changed me, irrevocably and profoundly. I’m always happy when I find your reviews on Amazon, I don’t always agree but then that’s the beauty of this whole enterprise. I somehow made it through an undergraduate degree in classical music without hearing nary a mention of the man. In hindsight this is strikes me as completely insane. That a supposedly leading bastion of music education in our country could offer a course that does not at least pay some tribute to Bruckner!  Regardless, thank you again. I have been making up for lost time and have amassed a considerable Bruckner collection since then. I doubt it could ever match your own but I would love to send you some recordings as a way of a thank you. Please let me know if there is anything in particular that you have been chasing and I’ll check to see what I have. I’m a big fan of high resolution digital music and have gigabytes of Bruckner in that format. I’m an hour north of Melbourne so hopefully Australia Post could facilitate a quick exchange. Although they are Australia Post... Best wishes Josh P.S. Commiserations for being a Demons supporter. I’m a Collingwood supporter by birth and so this year ,I feel I have it worse.

 

Dear Mr. O'Hanlon, please allow me to send you a brief thank-you note for your excellently erudite and entertaining reviews on the Amazon websites.

Finding out that there exist individuals, albeit rare, who do enjoy Karajan's account of K. 543 was, in a way, socially validating as all of my friends are into HIP Mozart and I had started to feel ostracized because of my enjoyment of this and other dinosaurs (I even enjoy Klemperer's Don Giovanni, so HIP redemption may never blossom for me).

I apologize for the unwelcome and undemanded epistolary intrusion and I wish you splendid festivities and 2015.

Best regards from Italy

Marco

 

Hello Bernard

I just liked to say you hello and thank you for such an embarrassment of riches by your rewiews. It has been a real pleasure to read them and to receive a lot of good, often suprising tips. What is best, I have learn a lot, even though our tastes seem to be very similiar. Your writing style is wonderful -  it reflects how serious business classical music is, but how one is not supposed to take it TOO seriously.

 

Oh, I use name Malverns in Amazon, somewhat misleading name because I live in Finland, knowing old dwelling places of Sibelius quite well.  I liked very much your lists and like to ask if you are willing to receive some wishes what cds you should absolutely review.

 

Dear Mr. O’Hanlon

I suppose you can add me to your list of followers, if I’ve pushed that number into double digits so much the better. several years ago I stumbled upon one of your reviews and it got me thinking that somewhere along the path of musical enjoyment I took a side road. Most likely this occurred when my quest for “Hi-Fi” and “Good Sound” began with subscriptions to Stereo Review, High Fidelity, and Audio. Except for Audio, the others were eclipsed by the Absolute Sound and later Stereophile, both of which are nothing more today than advertising with many superlatives thrown in so I can unload 25 or 30k on an amplifier of my choosing. Audio was the best of the lot, remaining mostly neutral but all of them suffered to some degree with their music reviews.

This was in the early 70’s long before any ability to actually listen to the recording before blowing seven or eight dollars on what would become a good target later on.

Out of the several hundreds of vinyl LP’s I’ve held onto perhaps 50 or 60 will ever see the light of day again. The early compact disc players were pitiable affairs and I went without until 1986, by then they’d become listenable and nearly achieved the “perfect sound forever” mantra that was displayed.

But the reviews, at least they were something, and I never gave any thought that having multiple copies of a Mozart or Beethoven Symphony by differing orchestras or conductors would even be sensible. Besides I was searching for the last bit of sound “purity”, moving my speaker cabinets by inches and rearranging furniture when my wife wasn’t around. I’ve seen for many years now that this was pure folly.

Which brings me to your reviews. Checking my i-tunes library it was your review of "Karajan in Moscow" vol. 1 that I ripped in July of 2013 that led me into the light. I’m mesmerized when I listen to it, and a live recording too. I was definitely missing out. Now with many copies of Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner Symphonies stacked up ready for play I wonder if Jeff Bezos will invite me for dinner sometime as I’m such a good customer of the Amazon jungle. I’ll say in closing that you and your compatriots, Jon Miller, Ralph Moore, and the Santa Fe listener have added to my overall enjoyment of Classical music as have no others. Well, I’ll say that if it weren’t for my mother picking up a supermarket special LP oh some 60 years ago at the A&P I may never have known. Thanks Very Much! michael

 

I discovered your reviews on Amazon in a desperate attempt to find someone telling it like it is about Brendel's Mozart. Now I can't stop reading them instead of studying anatomy. (I'm a pianist who spontaneously decided to go to medical school, probably a big mistake.) I just wanted to thank you for this contribution to the world, and for providing me with some much-needed amusement. Here there are some recordings of mine; maybe they will provide you with some amusement: www.natalie-erlich.com Natalie

 

Dear Mr. O'Hanlon I greatly enjoy the reviews which you post on Amazon, please keep up the good work and ignore the nay sayers.  However unlike you I am a bit of a fence sitter regarding HIP.  It amuses me how conductors and musicians queue up to rubbish the great HVK now that he has been safely dead for nigh on a quarter of a century .  Nevertheless I must confess to  enjoying  some members of the HIP, Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert for example.

 

I've tried to post the link if you should wish to torture yourself.  The performance in question completely confirms your oft repeated criticisms of "Jeggy" as you call him.  It is a total redux on the 5th.  rendering it down to the level of some early symphony by JC or CPE Bach.  He bypasses Haydn and Mozart and goes full Galant on Beethoven.  It is devoid of passion drama, suspense and development.  Listen at yout peril. Keep up the good work - Patrick Latimer

Dear Mr O' Hanlon, having read most of your reviews on Amazon i feel the need to express my gratitude for all the new music you have directed me to, as well as confirming my opinions and feelings for the music I already knew. No small bonus lies in the stylistics of the reviews. However, most of all I revel in the fact that you insist that music, culture and the achievements of civilisation of the past few thousand years is no small matter, on the contrary it is what we need more than ever in a world where surface, ignorance, empty formal education and stupidity seem the premier requisite for self confidence and success. And, music needs to be the real thing, blood and tears and a battle field of emotion as well as a place of rest and comfort. I' m a cardiologist in Sweden, thankfully working in a clinic headed by a boss in possession of 10 000 books and, as I, a few thousand CD's and on a constant mission, perhaps Quixotic but no other option exists, to battle the dense self gratification and morally inept culture of privilege that permeates health care in Sweden and our society. I've directed her to your reviews and we're both in deep awe of your prowess. Thanks for the inspiration, your exquisite taste and keep the punches coming! Spare no false prophets or luke warm musical technocrats! Yours sincerely! Peter Lindell

 

Dear Bernard, I hope you won't mind my writing in this fashion; you probably don't remember our brief exchange on Amazon some time since, occasioned I think by Beethoven's Violin Concerto.  It seemed to me I owed you a debt of thanks for your CD reviews: may I venture to offer you my thanks for them, for they have not merely informed and amused, but not infrequently (and in numerous sometimes incidental ways) moved and even solaced, me over the past year. I have been delighted and encouraged by them. It has done me good to hear your 'voice' - a voice sounding all the correct notes, with the right tone and phrase, the proper allusion, imagery, resonance, reminiscence and harmonics - emanating from the Antipodes! Kindred spirits are scarce. Some years ago I contributed Amazon reviews of certain marvels wrought by Karajan in Wagner, Bruckner, R.Strauss, and Schoenberg - only to remove them subsequently in a fit of despair. I am pleased now has the company of an adequately appreciative comment. (...Of course, no comment could really be 'adequate'.) Your work is not unappreciated, and it is heartening to perceive such intelligence and sensibility (and appropriately irreverent defiance and independence) still present and at work in the world. 

 

I'm a fledgling academic at the Dept of English of the University of York, trying with increasing desperation to complete my PhD on the influence of (to some extent Old Norse and Middle English but chiefly) Old English poetry in the 20thC -  accentual-alliterative verse in the 20thC. I'm in my third year and like Milton 'began late' - I am a (somewhat) 'mature' student, about a decade older than most of my fellows; I took my BA here in the late '90s. I am currently fretted and grated by the chapter on Ezra Pound, chafing to get started on the third and last chapter, on (mainly) Tolkien (...C.S. Lewis and Auden). (Chapter One is concerned with Kipling.)

 I'm all for Granpaw Ez but the chapter has become an incubus.

 

I am not, alas, musically qualified in the slightest, and I must entertain doubts regarding my musical acuity. When I'm not pursuing my scholarly day-job I occasionally succeed in composing, and still more occasionally in publishing, verse. Lyrical verse, to be more specific - but merely because nobody will accept the long narrative poem in strict metres on a mythic subject, which is my major preoccupation.  But epos is unfashionable. I am as ever contra mundum. Located as I am in an 'English' Dept., whose real purpose is to inculcate the young with neo-Foucouldian and sub-Marxoid cacodoxies, I am widely regarded as an unspeakable formalist fascist reactionary.  I must face a new group, probably 95% female, of undergraduates this coming term; I am agog to hear all about how they are being oppressed by 'hegemons'.

 

Re. 'the Poms' my personal circumstance (identity and loyalties) is professionally, culturally, and ethnically rather complicated! Perhaps as an evident lover of the English language at least, you will appreciate this.

...And you see poor old Blighty has been marred by a series of cataclysmic disasters: 1066; "the Reformation"; Industrialisation. I am not sure England really exists any more, WWII eliciting the last glimmer; it has become as Heaney has said, 'an England of the mind'.

 

As for your Amazonian writing, it's evident you ought to be reviewing CDs professionally, and that somebody editorial ought to give you a weekly column for other disquisitions. I've just been enjoying your cornucopious rhapsodies on Kna in Bruckner (of course the former is sporting a fedora - an affectation in which I myself have been known to indulge) but one would scarcely wish this trifling detail to interfere with your 'Kna the Cowboy' fantasy): would you be inclined to recommend Kna in Wagner? I was very impressed by a 'Walkure' Akt 1 I encountered a few years back, but severely disappointed by his much-venerated 1962 'Parsifal' - perhaps I am missing something?  The problem with folk like Kna & Furtwangler is that the nature of the discography requires a Vergilian guide. I write to you laid up with my second cold of the winter; I imagine it stops raining from time to time where you live. Regards and best wishes,  Rahul.

 

I see that - predictably! - this sublime performance of Bruckner's Fifth Symphony, from Claudio Abbado and the magnificent Lucerne Festival Orchestra, received one of Bernard O'Hanlon's hatchet jobs.There's no accounting for taste, but this ill-mannered yob posts his vile, destructive nonsense and revels in self-gratification and plaudits from Amazon USA followers of his - they hang on his every word, and he's convinced them that he is a "Bruckner Authority" - beyond belief! Well, this won't wash, in the UK... I know a fraud when I meet one! Anyway, Abbado's Fifth is glorious, and the Lucerne Orchestra is legato personified - is there a more sublimely beautiful Fifth in the catalogue? I think not. This is not cacophonous and brutal Bruckner; it is pure music, refined and sophisticated, Schubertian, if you will. There's no existential bullying, a la Celibidache, no over-statement, the music flows inexorably without heavy-handed interpretation and tempi are spot-on. Had Sir Thomas Beecham been lucky enough to listen to/view this recording, then he might well have considered recording some Bruckner - as Beecham said to Walter Legge: "You'll never succeed in foisting that stuff on the British public" Bruckner was all noise to Sir Thomas! I've had enough of reading the same old clichéd, pretentious codswallop - O'Hanlon and his cloaking reviews in whatever "high brow" literature that comes to hand - the "Hotspur Principle and the vasty deep", for heaven's sake. And his reviews are infantilism writ-large - Rattle and his "man perm", Abbado "the tame", "Woger" Norrington - and have more padding than the maximum security cell that he's now confined to. See my Paavo Jarvi Bruckner Ninth review - O'Hanlon has taken leave of his senses! What matters is music, and that's exactly what this performance delivers and in excellent sound and picture quality. O'Hanlon will be enraged! I've written another five-star review - that puts me in the same category as Grady Harp (?) and John Kwok (?) according to Barmy Bernard O'Hanlon. Never read his piffle and avoid being contaminated by his evident self-loathing and his wrong-headed opinions - stuff and nonsense! O'Hanlon isn't here for the music - we can be certain of that! Ignore the ravings of the antipodean fool, purchase this DVD and enjoy the performance.