วีดีโอ

This dates from 1890 and Shostakovich was born in 1906. I am not sure Shostakovich was influenced by Sibelius at any point (or even knew his music).

@@brkahn of course Shostakovich was familiar with Sibelius's music. There's a quote from Lemminkäinen suite in DSCH's 12th Symphony. Still I agree that it was not Sibelius who influenced DSCH most (because it was Mahler obviously)

@@ИванДмитриенко-х6г Thank you for this insight. I just listened again to Sh's 12th symphony but could not find the quotation from Lemminkäinen. Can you point it out? (Lemminkäinen is quite long, too.)

​@@brkahn It is believed that the second theme from the 1st movement (starting from bar 30) is Lenin's theme based on the motive from Lemminkäinen in Tuonela. Conductor Vasily Petrenko mentioned it in a interview: "There’s a three-note theme representing the people, while Lenin is heard in a two-note theme (I subscribe to the view that he denotes a brutal leader or anti-human force in two note themes, and “humanity” in three-note ones). You can hear how Lenin moves the people towards catastrophe in the first movement. He then follows Lenin to Razliv in Finland, where he reflects on his strategy. We hear a theme from Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen in Tuonela which deals with the hero’s death, when he is cut into pieces and thrown in a river - later his mother pulls out the pieces and only by her tears is he restored again. The message is clear. It’s one of the most clever calculations he made: firstly, to quote Sibelius - the necessary people would understand the message - and to put in the revolutionary songs as a cover. You can sense how songs start with a clear intention but are altered and warped."

@@ИванДмитриенко-х6г I agree that there is a similarity between the theme at the beginning of Sh's 12th and that in Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, but they are different: the first one is DFEGD and the second is CDEFC. So it is not a quotation (in the way he quotes Tchaikovsky's Manfred in another symphony, I forgot which one). Whether it is a 'twisted' allusion, as Vasily Petrenko thinks, or a mere coincidence, is not clear to me.

I agree with you.

fucking amazing again, lol

It is, and, for exactness, the period of composition is 1882-84...

lovely one

I see.

Nope. The main reason Christian Sinding isn't more widely known is that his music was suppressed in Norway after WWII because he was signed up for the Nasjonal Samling, the Norwegian fascist party in 1941 shortly before his death, while already suffering from dementia for years and not actually being a fascist sympathiser at all. He was very popular in Norway and Germany before the war, and for a good reason. His music is incredibly well-crafted and he knew how to write good tunes. The problem here is that this is just not a very good performance. The playing in the Scherzo for example is really slopppy at times. The 1969 Norwegian-released LP recording with the Hindar String Quartet and Eva Knardahl on piano is much, much better.

@@classicallpvault8251 Nope, can I that also say. You are surely correct about the recording quality but still, you're off the mark: I was telling you about my opinion of Sinding's music in general. I don't care about what happened in Norway but I knew about him back in the 60's and 70's, when my mother gave me his only good piece to play (which I did), a short one, which was also occasionally broadcast on Hungarian radio, so he wasn't so unknown or suppressed. No, he generally simply didn't cut it among so many better composers and compositions, sorry.

@@petersimon5231 I still have read no specific criticism of what his weak points are and why you'd come to this conclusion. Now his work might not be your taste (there are classical music enthousiastics who dislike Brahms, Beethoven or even J.S. Bach so that's certainly possible with a lesser known composer too) but you haven't mentioned what, according to you, is wrong with it. And your opinion is worth exactly the same as anyone else's unless you back it up with some analytical criticism. As I said: he was a skilled musical craftsman, and by that I mean basic things like inventing interesting chord progressions, use of forms like sonata, rondo, ternary etc., how to build up and release suspense and rhythmic momentum, but he was also a terriffic melody writer. This shows in this quintet but also in his symphonies, his solo works for piano, violin concerti, and the 2 piano trios of his which have been recorded. I also rate him well above average as an orchestrator, especially due to the effective use of woodwinds (which is the most important aspect of orchestration) and the transparance of his orchestral writing, something which was a weak point of some widely acknowledged great composers like Schumann and Brahms, whose orchestration is a lot more tricky to make to work optimally in a concert or recording and requires significant additional dynamic rebalancing for instance. If you want to I can analyse this particular quintet in more detail and point out exactly why it's great music. IMHO he is the closest to a Norwegian Brahms who ever existed, and I personally prefer his music above that of Grieg by a considerable margin. Disliking his music based on personal taste (to the extent that you actually went back to this recording 3 years after posting this comment and post another comment about your annoyance with it, 4 years ago) is fine. I am only curious for your motivation why.

@@classicallpvault8251 I'm sorry for your loss of time writing so spaciously about this issue. Myself never received proper musical training to be able to analyse his music so don't expect much from me in this respect. I'd love to but basically art is a matter of taste to a vast majority of people and in this regard I can only say that I also don't listen to Bach, however great his music is, little Beethoven, both and some others simply on account of me being bored to death by repetition, but Sinding? My guts tell me that you're right saying he was a skilled musical craftsman - and that is saying he was not a really talented artist like, for ex., Grieg was. As to your "specific criticism", I don't thing a statements like "inventing interesting chord progressions" or "how to build up and release suspense and rhythmic momentum, but he was also a terriffic melody writer" is anything specific. These are generalities based on your aethetic estimation. In mine, he was particularly not a "terrific" writer of melodies, so I beg to differ, and probably on most other counts if you press me for this kind of "analysis". But this is based simply on my feelings of enjoying some others but not Sinding's music. And sorry again, I'm not going to listen to this music once more just to be able to roughly analyse why - it's not worth it from the point of view of my aethetics or time. Nothing pleasant here gives me significant feelings other than the need to get away from it. You know, he must have been a lot better in orchestration than Chopin, whose piano concerts are also a bit overplayed but I'd rather listen to those a hundred times than Sinding one more time. End of story for me. Now I'm listening to a piano trio by Constantin von Sternberg, then Vladimir Dyck is on my list. Nothing significant but they at least give some satisfaction and joy - those are why we turn to art, aren't they? Anger, repugnance and revolt we can get from anywhere else... Peace!

@@petersimon5231 Clearly your taste in music is completely different from mine. No need to apologise, things like that happen. I simply here a brilliantly crafted work full of memorable tunes here and you don't.

Exquisite!

I agree with you.