Gotterdämmerung
Kirsten Flagstad
William Fürtwangler
Opera d’Oro

If Toscanini and Beethoven, plus Brahms, mostly defined the Classical paradigm in which I grew up, it took me a while to appreciate Toscanini's great antipode, Furtwängler—apart from the limits of my own adolescent vision, I found the terms in which most people idolized him truly off-putting, even more so those conductors who cited him as a model for performances that inevitably struck me as pointless and turgid. But while I've not come to like the self-proclaimed Furtwänglerians any better, I certainly learned to venerate—yes, I'll use that word—the object of their adulation. And there's nothing of Furtwängler I love more than his Wagner. Wagner, too, came relatively late into my life—not until my early twenties, when a chance encounter with Die Walküre turned distaste into devotion. Furtwängler's studio Walküre has some amazing things—the brass swells under Siegmund's solo near the end of Act I or the stunningly lithe "Ride of the Valkyries." But I think I'll go ultimately for the ultimate "bleeding chunk": the final scene of Götterdämmerung with Kirsten Flagstad. Just listen to the way Furtwängler shapes the sequential reiterations of the Valhalla motive just before the end: what with other conductors sounds like a series of pedestrian repetitions becomes an intensifying line of overwhelming force—great conducting if ever I heard it.

The Complete Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers 1926-1930

Music Memoria

I should feel sad not to have some early jazz. Again, the choice does not come easy—the young Louis Armstrong, the Ellington of Black and Tan Fantasy? But I think I'll settle on Jelly Roll Morton. Not, though, the piano solos, much as I love them; for my Morton resides even more in those spectacular ensemble sessions with the Red Hot Peppers—the combination of tight discipline and easy swing, the raw sonorities and affective harmonies. Does anything in jazz surpass the trio of Sidewalk Blues? I wish, though, that the Library of Congress CD reissue hadn't sanitized out the spoken intro.

BERG

Altenberg-Lieder
Margaret Price
Claudio Abbado
DG The Originals

Not that much from my serialist past remains with me. But two pieces from the Gründerzeit of atonality have never lost their seismic impact: Schönberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16, and Berg's Altenberg-Lieder, Op. 5. Indeed, I heard both for the first time in the same concert, or series of concerts: a kind of Stravinsky mini-festival, with the composer conducting Les Noces and some of his newest music, presented in New York during my impressionable adolescence. The Altenberg-Lieder came as a particular sensation, having slumbered unpublished and all but totally unheard since their abortive premiere in 1913; my spine still tingles to the shivers it felt at those uncanny opening measures. Sadly, the recording made with the soloist of that occasion, the remarkable Bethany Beardslee, has long gone from the catalogue; of those now available that I know, I'd probably opt for Margaret Price and Claudio Abbado.

GERSHWIN

Piano music & Songs
Joan Morris
William Bolcom
WEA/Atlantic/Nonesuch

A trip to the record store just a couple of days ago—I do visit them occasionally!—brought a happy surprise: two of my very favorite LPs had made their way onto a single CD, allowing me to rekindle my acquaintance with, and enthusiasm for, both. Back in the days when I worked in various capacities—A & R man, sleeve-note annotator, copy editor, and, yes, recording artist—for Nonesuch Records, I had a hand in bringing to the label my friend and colleague William Bolcom, who quickly became a fixture of the operation. Of the various records Bill made for us, I particularly loved two devoted to Gershwin: one containing the piano music, the other a selection of songs with Bill's wife, the chanteuse Joan Morris. No one since Gershwin's own day, I think, has got so well at the heart, brain, and sinews of this music as Bill and Joan; I would think life poorer without the chance of hearing him play Liza or her singing Isn't It a Pity.

JUDY COLLINS

Wildflowers
WEA/Elektra

You shouldn't perhaps want one of your own recordings, but I'll shamelessly break the rule and bring one album in which I had a hand: the singer Judy Collins's Wildflowers, for which I wrote and conducted the arrangements. The songs-—by Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Judy herself—virtually sum up the folky side of the sixties; the production brought me for the first time to the Never-Never-Land of L.A. and allowed me to indulge the wild Mahlerian dreams that my serial persona kept at bay. I put everything I had into the album; hearing it today, I think, that kid had talent. Wonder where it went.