Review: 100 Richter Discs For Your Workout
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- The complete Karl Richter box includes all of his iconic Bach productions, plus a health chunk of Handel in slightly anachronistic performances featuring some amazing singers. Within his Fach, Richter was great. Beyond it, not so much. Most collectors will already know and own many of the Bach recordings, so check out the video to see if you want the rest of it.
I was surprised you got around to Karl Richter, a conductor and Bach interpreter who is considered hopelessly dated these days. You rightly pointed out that he was a "legend" in his day. From my vantage, at his best Richter was the greatest Bach specialist of his generation. I have many of DG's earlier reissues of these recordings. Smaller doses, less amenable for aerobic exercise, but easier to handle as a listener! Thanks greatly for this one.
Considered by who? Watch those passive voice constructions.
I have a sentimental attachment to Richter. For my 14 birthday, my Mom got me a four cassette box of Richter and
Orchestre -Bach de Munich playing the Brandenburgs and the Overtures. It was literally the beginning of my classical collection. Although I now prefer period performances, I still enjoy Richter's Bach recordings. (I've listened to a number in connection with the Cantata schlep.) I made a point to listen to the Christmas Oratorio this season, and was more impressed by the playing than the singing (although the singing was good). But then I listened to Rene Jacobs, because that's still the one I love best.
Thanks Dave as always, I enjoy your videos...and I find this one particularly amusing...it happens that I am a Karl Richter fan and I generally find his recordings of Bach's Kantaten and the great choral music to be the highest...I have many on CD , but in the late 80s I managed to get some LPs, beautiful boxes, by the way, and some orgel music ...thanks...keep on going and we are always watching...and listening...
Good overview of Richter’s work. Back in the day I was curious about his recording of Haydn with the BPO and was going to buy the LP. Decided to leave it in the bin; three cheers for restraint.
I experienced the styrofoam decay problem with the 2-disc set of Mahler’ s seventh, Abbado/CSO. The orange foam had melted to the CD surface. Fortunately it surrendered to warm water and a lint-free cloth; the disc played just fine after a thorough and careful drying (again with a dry lint-free cloth).
Richter’s disc of Handel overtures sounds very interesting; I will look around for it as a separate disc.
Thanks!
I quote: "Do we really want to talk about authenticity any more? I think to use the word in connection with the performance of music- and especially to define a style, manner or philosophy of performance- is neither description nor critique but COMMERCIAL PROPAGANDA." Thank God we have Karl Richter!
Problem with the Giulio Cesare is that the da capo sections of the arias are sung totally straight with no embellishments or variation so you get esch aria exactly the same twice
I had the same problem with the foam rubber in box sets...took me months to get rid of that garbabe. It did destroy some of my cds.
Lo primero que escuche de clásico, fue la Pasión según San Mateo en la grabación en video de Karl Richter, y me engancho para siempre a Bach.
Karl Richter? Oh. When I read "Richter for Workout" I thought about Sviatoslav Richter ... his interpretations are very good for working out fast and aggressively lol.
That's what I thought at first too. Was delighted to find it was Karl Richter, and was not meant as accompaniment for exercise.
Just don’t call it the Hedwig Bilgram Memorial Society - she’s still going strong, born in 1933.
I know. She should be the honorary president.
We kid because we love, right? Engaged continuo playing is important in baroque music, even if it shouldn't be there in classical.
David, you and I must really be on the same frequency. About two weeks ago, I began a detailed listening fest of Karl Richter recordings on Spotify and Amazon. Mostly Handel overtures, concerti, and arias, including the Op.3 & Op.6, the due cori concerti and Royal Fireworks with the English Chamber Orchestra, and the overtures with the London Philharmonic particularly captured my curiosity, since I was hoping that the English component might lighten some of Richter's characteristic gravitas. To a certain extent, it did, but not enough to displace my preference for Leppard, Menuhin, and even Eduard van Beinum.
On the other hand, my discovery of the Fritz Lehmann Bamberg Opus 6 concerti in DG's smaller 2020 reissue compilation of The Art of Karl Richter was a triumphant find. The intense gravitas is thoroughly musical, and it has opened for me a keen interest in Lehmann's other work. Most of his unfairly forgotten discs with Bamberg, and especially in Berlin (filling the transition between Furtwangler and Karajan) has left us with some incredible recordings, many of them taped in Berlin's fabulous Jesus-Christus-Kirche. Like Richter, he died way too young, and a Lehmann retrospective is long overdue.
I like these recordings, but have pity on those of use who read your video title, and started salivating over the prospect of 100 discs of Sviatoslav Richter!...
Don't you just love the ambiguity?
Is there any Heinrich Schutz on there?
The fools who are lugging around boxes of vinyl LPs are getting the real workout.
How much do the weigh on the richter scale?
4,163,579 Hedwig Billigrams
Karl Richter was a musical genius in the tradition of saxon kantors. Every thing he played was played with sincerity of heart. With him the Musica Sacra IS Musica Sacra, not a minuetto, no "coqueteries": meditative and majestic. Anyway I like Mr.Hurwitz critics, they are always interesting and funny, even when i do not agree.
Thank you Dave - illuminating, entertaining as well as educational as always - it happens to be available on Amazon for a “limited time only” at $233.91 - I think I’ll pass - have most of his Bach separately...
I'll pass on this DG behemoth. I bought the Richter Blu-ray/DVD Bach choral works in the Archive white box and deemed that sufficent. There are several youtube video tours of classical cd collections, and it is interesting to see how many of these big boxes are still in the plastic wrap. Unopened these objects perhaps confer some totemic powers on the owner. And where do they go after the collector passes... ?
They go to Academy Records on W. 18th St. in Manhattan.
It's a shame Universal doesn't grant you permission to use their music, you having even done that DG Beethoven promo video and whatnot. I guess if it were up to only one person, that would be easily solved, but the bureacratic machinery in a huge corporation like that must be insurmountable (even for those working there...).
Exactly
Are you familiar with the recordings of the Bach flute sonatas with Paul Meisner and, guess who, Hedwig Bilgram?
I have this box and have been struggling to get through some of it. It's definitely a mixed bag. The German Handel Messiah is the worst Messiah I have heard. Painfully slow, heavy and in German. Hedwig Bilgram is excellent!
Thanks to your workout videos I have a good use for this box.
I have Richter's LPO version, I do not know if the German one is Der Messias orchestrated by Mozart: in my opinion both excellent, with stellar soloists and the wonderful trumpet of Maurice Andre in the german recording.
God bless Hedwig Bilgram.