Ted Libbey

Oct 8, 2024 | theabsolutesound.com | Ted Libbey

A A A Topic for later consideration: Why do we hear less chamber music on the radio and in concert halls than we used to?

Apr 16, 2024 | theabsolutesound.com | Ted Libbey

A A A Both of these works are examples of Schumann at his considerable best, as opposed to his fitfully complicated worst. Both date from 1842, the “year” of chamber music, in which Schumann took on a genre he had barely touched before, and did some amazing things—particularly with the piano quintet, the first of a new species joining piano with the standard string quartet, whose progeny would include works by Brahms, Dvorák, Franck, and many others.

Apr 9, 2024 | theabsolutesound.com | Ted Libbey

A A A Composers’ second thoughts are usually better than their first. Take Beethoven, who was a master of second thoughts…and third…and fourth, and how that tendency played out in works like the Fifth Symphony and the opera Fidelio. Or Sibelius, whose painstaking revision of his Violin Concerto proved vastly superior to the original. Mendelssohn, too—fastidious reviser of his own first efforts—usually did better the second time.

Oct 6, 2023 | theabsolutesound.com | Ted Libbey |David McGee |David Mcgee |Greg Cahill |Derk Richardson

A A A The stereo cycle of Beethoven’s quartets that my generation, an old one now, grew up on has at last been released in high-resolution audio by Sony and issued on SACD in Japan and DSD 64 download in the U.S. The original recordings were produced between 1958 and 1961 by Howard Scott and the young (then in his early 20s) and wonderfully capable Thomas Z. Shepard; they’ve been remastered to the usual exquisite standard by Andreas K. Meyer.