# The Art of Rene Leibowitz



## Aggelos (May 29, 2009)

Where is the Rene Leibowitz love in this forum?
http://www.angelfire.com/music2/reneleibowitz/rl.html
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Leibowitz-Rene.htm


















http://www.scribendumrecordings.com/our-shop/4583959841/sc510-13cd---the-art-of-leibowitz/10114478
http://www.norpete.com/c0032.html
http://www.mdt.co.uk/leibowitz-rene-the-art-of-italiana-leibowitz-scribendum-13cds.html

amazon reviewers says


> These are the recordings that René Leibowitz (1913-1972) made for Reader's Digest back in the 1960s.
> [there are a few omissions - see below under "Points of Interest"]
> Charles Gerhardt (on loan from RCA) was producer, and the Decca engineering staff - headed by Kenneth Wilkinson - was in charge of the recording sessions.
> Other conductors who recorded for the mail-order program included Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult, Antal Dorati, Jascha Horenstein, Rudolf Kempe, Josef Krips, Charles Munch, Fritz Reiner and Sir Malcolm Sargent.
> ...


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I was interested in buying the Rene Leibowitz boxset issued by Urania Records but the JP reviewer says the following (while awarding it with one star only)


> It is a point of interest that the Reader's Digest Recordings were available as mail-orders in the past . Some of them were re-issued by Chesky and RCA. However, by comparing those with the present Urania boxset I am surprised at how bad the audio quality is. I can go as far as doubting that the people at Urania Records had a listen to their CDs when they completed the mastering-manufacturing of them. It is a boxset that I would advise people to steer clear of.
> 
> http://www.amazon.co.jp/RENE-LEIBOW...qid=1456905864&sr=1-6&keywords=rene+leibowitz


http://www.uraniarecords.com/en/product/leibowitz-conducts/


















Did anyone get the Urania Records release? is it that bad in terms of acoustic quality?


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## Guest (Mar 2, 2016)

I like Leibowitz's Kammersymphonie.


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## Aggelos (May 29, 2009)

Yes indeed, The "Art of Leibowitz" involves both his conducting career and his original oeuvres.
Although the above releases do not feature any of his compositions





.


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## Aggelos (May 29, 2009)

Anyone care to enjoy Rene Leibowitz on the price of $450.00, by purchasing an Ultra Tape re-issue?
Well, there it is!










> *Analogue Productions Ultra Tape reel-to-reel reissues!
> 
> Twelve masterpiece titles, each a 15 ips, ¼-inch 2-track (½ track) analog tape copy
> 
> ...


http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/1...-Power_Of_The_Orchestra-14_Inch_-_15_IPS_Tape



> Twelve masterpiece titles are featured in this new reissue series, each a 15 ips, ¼-inch analog tape copy (IEC equalization) sourced from a copy of the original analog master tape. Transferred real-time, using an ATR-modified Ampex Tape Machine with flux magnetic heads. Custom slipcase cover.
> 
> Recorded at Kingsway Hall and engineered by Kenneth Wilkinson, this record couples Moussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition with Night On Bare Mountain. It has long been considered among the greatest sounding albums ever made. Perhaps most stunning about Power of the Orchestra are the effortless dynamics, which have been reviewed and raved about ever since the first RCA shaded dog. From the teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy gentle plucks of strings to the WHAM!! CRASH!! SLAM!! of a full orchestra without a bit of notice. It's heart-stopping, jump-out-of-your-seat-type dynamics. The Power of the Orchestra - a more appropriate title there never was. But to hear it at 45 RPM...Oh! My! God! This thing's got all the weight of an anchor but at the same time the clarity and airiness and sparkle of a feather. Nuance, a holographic soundstage, emotion to spare - this one's got it all. A true reference. Power, indeed. Originally recorded in 1962.
> 
> Each Ultra Tape reissue copy is priced at $450.


Although not noted on the Analogue Productions tracklist, the above recording has Leibowitz's orchestral version for Mussorgsky's Night on Bare Mountain


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I cannot stand Leibowitz's own music. Ugly in the worst sense. He really bought into that mid-20th c atonal, serialism school. His music will be utterly forgotten. But his music making is terrific - a fine conductor with a great ear who, like Boulez, could strip away the clutter and really let the composer shine through. His Beethoven cycle has long been my favorite of the Big Band Beethoven school. I don't think there's a dud performance in the set. The quartet of singers in the 9th is the greatest ever. Leibowitz didn't make enough recordings or perform live often enough to make his name all that familiar. Even classical listeners and cd buyers are mostly ignorant of his work, and the 1960's were highly competitive for conductors. Think of all the guys doing Beethoven cycles: Karajan, Szell, Ormandy, Bernstein, Cluytens, Schmidt-Isserstedt, Jochum...Leibowitz on Reader's Digest didn't get enough publicity.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I do have the Leibowitz Beethoven set. I think it is generally celebrated and I rate it highly. But I don't think I have heard him in anything else. Judging by the link in the OP, he seems to have recorded a fair bit. Someone should try to reissue some of them. Presumably doing this would not be a major expense.


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## Weird Heather (Aug 24, 2016)

The recording that Aggelos mentioned a couple posts above this one is the recording that got me interested in classical music. When I was a child, this record was in our house, and I played it over and over again until it wore out. Later, I managed to find another copy (at a high price, of course, because it had since become a cult classic) and digitized it. It would be nice to get a properly remastered recording, but the digitized LP is satisfactory. Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" is a problematic piece with many versions and orchestrations floating around, with the Rimsky-Korsakov version being the best known (and I think more successful than Mussorgsky's original versions). Leibowitz created his own version, and as far as I know, this recording is the only way to get it. I find that his version makes a bit more sense than Rimsky-Korsakov's, or even Mussorgsky's originals, although he does take a few liberties, particularly at the end.

I have since acquired Leibowitz's cycle of Beethoven's symphonies. This cycle is available as a budget-priced download on Amazon. (If I remember correctly, it is less than US$4.) Usually, I prefer the HIP approach with Beethoven, but for the mid-20th-century large orchestra style, Leibowitz does a great job, and his style seems to foreshadow the HIP movement. It would be nice if his other recordings could be released this way; so far, everything I have heard from him has been top quality. It's a shame that there appear to be some sound quality issues with the Urania reissue.

There are other conductors and orchestras from this time whose music was released through discount channels, such as Reader's Digest or the budget subsidiaries of major labels, and some of their work is excellent. It would be nice if the best of these would see the light of day. I've heard excellent recordings from the Oslo Philharmonic, conducted by Odd Grüner-Hegge. His recording of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony (released by RCA on the Camden budget label in the United States) breathed new life into that sometimes-tired work for me and caused me to undertake a new investigation of all of Tchaikovsky's symphonies.


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## Aggelos (May 29, 2009)

Why do you think that the Analogue Productions Ultra Tape reel-to-reel reissue that I posted above (price at 450$) is not a properly remastered recording?
This is the Ultra Audio Fidelity Presentation, right there. Nothing can top that.
As a matter of fact, I didn't refer to the SACD mastered by George Marino as the ultra version.
https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=6107

Mussorgsky 'Night on Bare Mountain' - Gottfried von Einem's edition




Mussorgsky's 'A Night on the Bare Mountain' exists in several versions. There's the composer's own original orchestral score, as well as the choral version he used in his opera 'Sorochintsy Fair.' Rimsky-Korsakov's edition has been the most widely played and recorded over the years, with Stokowski's version, familiar from Walt Disney's "Fantasia," being a close runner-up. Rene Leibowitz made his own arrangement with a completely new ending, while Charles Gerhardt heavily edited the Rimsky score and engaged Sir Adrian Boult to record his arrangement for Reader's Digest. All these different versions are on You Tube. The edition heard here, prepared by the Austrian composer Gottfried von Einem (1918-1996) "offers an alternative working of material that had undergone a number of changes at the hands of its original composer, and had, therefore, been left in some final disorder." (From the notes to the Marco Polo CD on which Alfred Walter conducts the North German Radio Orchestra) It starts off in a familiar vein, using the Rimsky score as its basis, but towards the end Gottfried von Einem's imagination takes over ... and we don't get the usual quiet ending!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Leibowitz is certainly an interesting an unjustly forgotten conductor (I don't know any of his music but would like to hear it ) . But like Virgil Thomson and Theodor Adorno, he absolutely loathed the music of Sibelius . Leibowitz called Sibelius "the worst composer whop ever lived " or words to that effect . Too bad . Everyone has blind spots .


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Leibowitz wrote a pamphlet titled *Sibelius: the World's Worst Composer* in 1955. He later claimed the title was a joke. Who knows. What we do know is that Leibowitz's most famous student, Pierre Boulez never conducted any Sibelius, or Tchaikovsky for that matter. For me, it's kind of divine justice: in another generation the music of Boulez will be largely forgotten, just as Leibowitz's already it. That's what you get for being so harsh in judging composers and their music which the vast majority of audiences and other performers love dearly.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

MBHAUB , it's impossible to predict how the music of Boulez will be seen in the future , and we should always be careful about predicting any composer of the present day will be "forgotten ". 
In Mahler's day, many critics predicted HIS music would be forgotten ! Famous last words !


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Usually, I would agree with your point. But there's something else to consider. For many reasons, the year 2000 was a turning point. And one thing has become clear to people who follow classical music: almost nothing from the atonal or serialism school of music has been enshrined in the so-called "standard repertoire" - and this, 100 years after it started. What has made it? Wozzeck, and Bergs violin concerto. And not much else. With a lot of hindsight, we can now look back and realize that there were a lot of people fooled by these "composers" for the last 100 years. I remember vividly one guy commenting that "now it's okay to like Howard Hanson again". You're right, there is no way to predict who will be rejected or accepted, but then that's one of the basic arguments Pleasants made: the composers we consider great today were in fact quite widely cherished and respected in their own day. Mahler actually was quite well accepted by audiences and performers alike everywhere, except in the vile den of hate: Vienna. His music spread rapidly; it didn't suddenly come into exposure because of Bernstein. Critics have been notoriously wrong. But there is not one single composer who today is considered great who was not esteemed in his own day. Not one.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

mbhaub said:


> ...But there is not one single composer who today is considered great who was not esteemed in his own day. Not one.


I think you have to qualify this a bit. Esteemed by whom? Bach may have been esteemed by some people in Leipzig, but he was probably not all that well-known beyond that in his lifetime. Many of those despised serialists were esteemed by the avant-garde crowd, and probably in academia. So I would say, _most _of the composers we consider "great" today were widely esteemed by the musical public in their lifetimes.


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## Weird Heather (Aug 24, 2016)

Aggelos said:


> Why do you think that the Analogue Productions Ultra Tape reel-to-reel reissue that I posted above (price at 450$) is not a properly remastered recording?
> This is the Ultra Audio Fidelity Presentation, right there. Nothing can top that.
> As a matter of fact, I didn't refer to the SACD mastered by George Marino as the ultra version.
> https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=6107


Actually, the recording I consider not properly mastered is the LP that I digitized myself using whatever equipment I happened to have at the time. I would love to have the $450 version (if I had the equipment to play it); it is probably the gold standard. Unfortunately, it is $450. I'll probably have to be satisfied with my copy of the LP until a decent remastering job shows up for download on Presto Classical or some other site like that.


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## Aggelos (May 29, 2009)

Weird Heather said:


> Actually, the recording I consider not properly mastered is the LP that I digitized myself using whatever equipment I happened to have at the time. I would love to have the $450 version (if I had the equipment to play it); it is probably the gold standard. Unfortunately, it is $450. I'll probably have to be satisfied with my copy of the LP until a decent remastering job shows up for download on Presto Classical or some other site like that.


Oh I see, you were referring to your remastering, that you thought as being something that leaves much to be desired. Certainly $450 is a hefty price, but those people at Analogue Productions ensure that the buyer receives something that is a golden standard of reference quality. Meaning that it is geared to the ultimate audiophile who thinks that price isn't a matter that would become an obstacle when seeking for the ultimate quality.
Then again, since you're looking for a decent remastering job to appear on PrestoClassical and other pages, I may surmise that sometime in the past you considered options like the SACD or the JP release but you've ruled those out?

http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/6107
https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=6107&showall=1

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/mussorgsky-pictures-at-an-exhibition-a-night-on-bare-mountain/hnum/4304290
https://www.amazon.com/Mussorgsky-Pictures-Exhibition-Rene-Leibowitz/dp/B01KLIIWHS/


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## Weird Heather (Aug 24, 2016)

Aggelos said:


> Then again, since you're looking for a decent remastering job to appear on PrestoClassical and other pages, I may surmise that sometime in the past you considered options like the SACD or the JP release but you've ruled those out?


I remember seeing these listed in the past, and I haven't ruled them out entirely. I prefer not to add any more physical CDs to my collection (since they take up space and receiving packages in the mail can be a hassle), but it might be worth it for this. Thanks for reminding me. I wonder how many other obscure, but high quality, old recordings are available in obscure releases like this.


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## Aggelos (May 29, 2009)

How many indeed? To answer that, perhaps one might follow Analogue Productions and their high-fidelity restorations.

https://www.hraudio.net/discsbylabel.php?label=51
http://www.sa-cd.net/alltitles2/51/1

The latest release seems to be this one
https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=12966
http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/1...e_Ravel_Rapsodie_Espagnole-Hybrid_Stereo_SACD


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## Aggelos (May 29, 2009)

From what you can gather, the Ultra Tape is definitely the ultimate experience to enjoy Leibowitz's Power of the Orchestra


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

mbhaub said:


> Leibowitz wrote a pamphlet titled *Sibelius: the World's Worst Composer* in 1955. He later claimed the title was a joke. Who knows. What we do know is that Leibowitz's most famous student, Pierre Boulez never conducted any Sibelius, or Tchaikovsky for that matter. For me, it's kind of divine justice: in another generation the music of Boulez will be largely forgotten, just as Leibowitz's already it. That's what you get for being so harsh in judging composers and their music which the vast majority of audiences and other performers love dearly.


 Boulez hated the music of Tchaikovsky . So much so he put a clause in his contract to become music director of the New York Philharmonic saying he would not be required to conduct any music buy this composer ! 
However, he had no objection to guest conductors conducting Tchaikovsky . From what I've heard, Boulez did not hate the music of Sibelius, but merely had no desire to conduct his music .


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> ... Leibowitz's most famous student, Pierre Boulez never conducted any Sibelius, or Tchaikovsky for that matter. For me, it's kind of divine justice: in another generation the music of Boulez will be largely forgotten, just as Leibowitz's already it. That's what you get for being so harsh in judging composers and their music which the vast majority of audiences and other performers love dearly.


The young Boulez was very opinionated and aggressive with it but as he aged he mellowed a lot. I remember shortly before he died he was briefly detained at an airport (I think) somewhere because he was on a list of potential terrorists. Apparently, it was something he had said decades earlier about burning down opera houses. He became a great conductor but he was also a great composer and, although many who are fans of his targets (especially from his younger days), seem to relish the idea of his music dying with him, I think this is most unlikely. Instead, his music will come to seem conservative (it is already happening!) and he will be targeted by another generation of "young Turks". I guess much minimalism involves reaction against his type of music but I suspect his music may outlast much minimalist music.

As a conductor he was far from being the only one who disliked some of the more conservative composers of his time. I believe Klemperer strongly disliked the music of Strauss, although he recorded an excellent Metamorphosen.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

The music of Boulez was propagated mostly by -- Boulez. There's a very small group of highly-specialized conductors who have taken up his music. In 50+ years of concert going, I have only encountered a Boulez work once, and that was in a college performance of a group dedicated to new music. There are many, many composers from the mid-20th whose music will largely vanish, just like the vast majority of music written in the 19th c has also disappeared from concert halls. He was a great conductor. Great composer? I don't know. Influential, sure. Interesting, no doubt. I just don't believe enough people are interested in his work to sustain it.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> The music of Boulez was propagated mostly by -- Boulez. There's a very small group of highly-specialized conductors who have taken up his music. In 50+ years of concert going, I have only encountered a Boulez work once, and that was in a college performance of a group dedicated to new music. There are many, many composers from the mid-20th whose music will largely vanish, just like the vast majority of music written in the 19th c has also disappeared from concert halls. He was a great conductor. Great composer? I don't know. Influential, sure. Interesting, no doubt. I just don't believe enough people are interested in his work to sustain it.


Well, as for conductors who have played Boulez, he didn't write that many orchestral pieces and much of his output was for the types of ensemble that play contemporary music - so they _are _specialised. However, Barenboim has conducted a fair bit over the years and I'm sure a good number of other mainstream conductors have, as well. Of course, when a composer is also a great conductor he is often going to be the go to conductor for record companies.

Barenboim has recorded Notations VII with the Chicago SO. Pollini has also recorded Boulez music as well as Aimard and neither of them can be described as specialists. But more than all this I am increasingly noting when listening to Boulez that his music does not seem new any more but does seem powerful. I'm sure his reputation will grow just as the reputations of, say, Bartok and Lutoslawski - both once considered extreme - have done.


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