RIP Lorin Maazel

[akiralx]

Not a conductor I warmed to, or whose recordings I collected to any degree (though I have a few), but clearly very talented, and as the obit below points out, when on form he could be superb:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/arts/music/lorin-maazel-brilliant-intense-and-enigmatic-conductor-dies-at-84.html?_r=1

[barry guerrero]

He was quite a speed demon in his early years. Check out some of the stuff he did with Walter Legge's Philharmonia, or the R. Strauss he did for Decca in Vienna. I think his best overall period was in Cleveland. I really like the Prokofiev and Respighi that recorded there. Then he was the first to record a complete Mahler cycle with the Vienna Phil. As ALL of you know, that cycle is pretty much hit and miss, with perhaps more 'misses' than hits. He was well respected in New York, and recorded another full Mahler cycle the. Believe it or not, he was on his way to a third full cycle with the Philharmonia. I haven't heard any of those, but apparently their in his late, under-tempo style. I enjoyed him immensely during the various Vienna New Year's concerts that he conducted. He always seemed to be really enjoying himself. I'm sorry he had to endure pneumonia. Horrible. RIP.

[pianobaba]

I don't think I've ever heard any of his Mahler, are there any recommendations? I enjoy his Sibelius.

[wagnerlover]

Of his Mahler, I like best the M4 with the Vienna Philharmonic and Kathleen Battle.

[ChrisH]

My favorite memory of Maazel is a very large picture of him at 9 years old. He was conducting the National Music Camp Orchestra. I think this was in 1939-40. This picture hung in the concourse of my high school. I walked by it everyday on the way to class. It's was always kind of funny seeing him in knickers. That's how I always thought of him.

[Damfino]

Can't say I was a huge Maazel fan, but I rather enjoyed much of his VPO Mahler cycle. I particularly like his 7th. The somewhat slower approach makes it have a real nighttime atmosphere, and the finale does not seem as jarring as it does on some recordings. And the cycle is quite well recorded.

I had Maazel's Beethoven cycle with the Cleveland Orchestra in the late 70's. It was terrible recorded/mastered by CBS, and as Barry said, Maazel was something of a speed demon then. His Beethoven tempos in the 70's were at speeds that are becoming the norm now (which is to say, too fast, IMO).

[barry guerrero]

I remember hearing the "Pastoral" from Maazel's Cleveland cycle, and really liking it. I haven't heard the others. Maazel's Mahler 7 is very interesting. I think it works better in the first three movements than in the last two; there's just not enough of a transformation from darkness to light. I agree that Maazel's M4 with Kathy Battle is quite good, although I don't think that Battle is really ideal for it - close, but not quite. Even though it's greatly under-tempo, I rather like his 8th. It has HUGE tam-tam smashes at the end, but not enough organ. The M2 with Jesseye Norman is pretty interesting as well. Really, objectively speaking, probably the best performance in that cycle was the very first one: M6. But the Boulez one trumps it, in my book.  The Vienna Phil. ALWAYS does M6 really well.

Barry

[SteelyTom]

It's hard to muster a list of his best records-- the Ravel one-act operas, I suppose.  I also like his Zemlinsky Lyric Symphony.  Maazel may have been the ideal conductor from a symphony subscriber's point of view.  His mandarin temperament helped to insure consistently high standards, even if memorable high points over the course of his career were lacking.

[waderice]

ANY biographer who attempts to write a biography of Maazel will certainly have quite a task on his hands without arousing controversy of some kind.  I'm glad it won't be me. 

Wade

[barry guerrero]

" His mandarin temperament helped to insure consistently high standards, even if memorable high points over the course of his career were lacking"

Very interesting point, very well expressed.

What I wonder is what future musicologists/critics will make of Maazel's own compositions. I see that this Decca dvd of his opera "1984" has received very good praise from the customer reviews. Helps to have Simon Keenlyside and Nancy Gustavson.

http://www.amazon.com/Lorin-Maazel-Royal-Opera-House/dp/B0015FMKZM

[waderice]

What I wonder is what future musicologists/critics will make of Maazel's own compositions. I see that this Decca dvd of his opera "1984" has received very good praise from the customer reviews. Helps to have Simon Keenlyside and Nancy Gustavson.

Though I haven't heard any of Maazel's own individual compositions, I did hear live (and him conducting it) his arrangement of Wagner's "Ring without Words".  Familiar parts of the "Ring" music segue quite well into others, but others not as well.  Some familiar excerpts I expected to hear didn't make the cut, and I was a bit disappointed.  The Telarc CD recording Maazel made of the arrangement bears this out, should anyone want to listen to it.

Wade

[barry guerrero]

Unfortunately, "Ring w/o Words" leaves out one of my favorite orchestral passages: the Prelude to Act II of "Siegfried". There are a couple of other Ring projects where it gets included.

[Roland Flessner]

My all-time favorite Maazel recording is the Manfred Symphony by Tchaikovsky with the VPO. Tempos are unremarkable, but it is a blisteringly intense performance. I have it on vinyl, and it has never turned up on CD, not even on Australian Eloquence.

[James Meckley]

My all-time favorite Maazel recording is the Manfred Symphony by Tchaikovsky with the VPO. Tempos are unremarkable, but it is a blisteringly intense performance. I have it on vinyl, and it has never turned up on CD, not even on Australian Eloquence.

Apparently it did show up on Australian Eloquence in 2002 (Eloquence 466 471-2). Here's a review by Victor Carr at Classics Today:

http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-4437/

And here's an indication that it was available at one time from Arkiv Music:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=59621&album_group=14

It is/was also available as a physical disc and a digital download from an outfit called High Definition Tape Transfers. These folks are/were engaged in the questionable practice of using old quarter-track open-reel commercial tape releases as source material for their "high resolution" discs and downloads. Setting aside the sonic issues of using tapes that were bulk duplicated at high speed and possessed of questionable Dolby-B alignment, I seem to recall that the company got into legal difficulties regarding copyright and had to withdraw their release of the Unicorn-Kanchana Horenstein Mahler 3.

http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/product.php?pid=7297

Even though the Australian Eloquence version may be out of print, copies probably circulate from time to time on the used market.

James

[Roland Flessner]

Thanks for the info, James. Perhaps I'll stumble across it one day in a secondhand store, or it may be reissued. My vinyl copy is in good shape and I have other good performances on CD, too (Kitaenko/Gürzenich, Chailly/RCO, Ahronovitch/LSO).

Japp van Zweden conducted it here in Chicago a couple years ago. His solution to the weakness of the finale was to chop off a good deal of it and replace it with the coda from the first movement. Impressively played by the CSO, but I don't think that worked at all.

Venturing even farther afield, has anyone heard the live DSO M6 with van Zweden, or Luisi/VPO? The latter was at the Nashville Symphony Store on vinyl, and I believe it's an analog recording.