Hurwitz's 'Cocaine Hippos' of Classical Music

[Alan Howe]

A seriously downgraded hippo.

[semloh]

.....my new favourite word, which I shall endeavour to use liberally in future, is "hippopotamously" 

I agree with DH. I have grown to love the man, his quirky sense of humour and even his raspy voice. It 'Paine's' me but I think he's even right about the Elgarian 3rd - yes, in truth I bought the CD because I hankered after a 3rd symphony but it's not Elgar. Less is sometimes more.

If they weren't churning out 'cocaine hippos' the companies might give more attention to the neglected UCs.

[Alan Howe]

If they weren't churning out 'cocaine hippos' the companies might give more attention to the neglected UCs.

Quite right!

[eschiss1]

And some people's first exposure to Theodor Kirchner will be on discs with his arrangements of Brahms' string sextets. Etc. (And while Raff may no longer need as much name recognition- though actually I'd say that's only true among strongly-classically-focused- more performances of his arrangements might help expand his name recognition more generally, and similarly for other still-neglected composers who wrote good arrangements and paraphrases of better-known music, especially if these works are available to pianists or other solo performers.)

[Alan Howe]

No-one would argue with that, Eric; but the issue here is, in the midst of the plethora of Bruckner 7 recordings, an arrangement of that work for chamber ensemble is released. Someone's been sniffing the cocaine...

[eschiss1]

A new arrangement or the Stein/Greissler one? Because it looks like it's part of MDG's ongoing series of the Vereinigung's arrangements. And what you're saying is, don't include an arrangement in that -already ongoing series- unless it's of a work I want to hear.
Which is your right.

[Alan Howe]

I was just wondering what the point would be. After all, these days we don't need an arrangement in order to get to know the work (the purpose of many arrangements in the past). In other words, was there a purpose in the past which is no longer relevant?

[eschiss1]

Perhaps up to a point. Listening to several arrangements (in this case by the composers) of Brahms and Schumann works made it easier to pay attention to what was happening in the original orchestral works, and not always because those composers are especially poor orchestrators (actually, Zemlinsky's arrangement of Mahler 6, a work I also know fairly well after 30+ years, had a similar effect.)