Shostakovich Symphonies, oh, and also Bruckner

August 17, 2010 8:34 AM

If you have some time that needs to be filled with music, you might want to listen to all the symphonies of Shostakovich and perhaps all of Bruckner's as well - Bernard Haitink's recordings of these two cycles are available for listening on myspace (of all places).
posted by Wolfdog (8 comments total)

I'm guessing the paucity of comments means I am not the only one who clicks on those links and gets directed to the rather bland www . myspace. com/music/charts, rather than some sort of salacious Shostakovich smorgasbord.
posted by fish tick at 9:51 AM on August 17, 2010

I don't know! The links work for me in several browsers; if anyone else is not able to get the content, speak up.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:53 AM on August 17, 2010

It is extremely frustrating to hear a McDonalds advert between two symphony movements.
posted by ruelle at 9:57 AM on August 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

P'raps one has to be a logged-in myspace user? D'oh!
*baton whack to forehead*
posted by fish tick at 9:58 AM on August 17, 2010

I have listened to a lot of Shostakovich, and I still find Haitink to be the definitive conductor for his symphonies, especially the 11th. On the other hand, Bruckner has better interpreters, to my ears. Funny to find symphonies on myspace - it seems streaming would be least suited to full orchestra works.
posted by VikingSword at 10:56 AM on August 17, 2010

fish tick, I don't think so. I don't have a MySpace login, but I had no trouble - the link took me to the correct page without asking for a thing. I also don't see/hear any ads for McDonalds or anything else... Am I even on the right page?

Anyhow, this is way cool. I love me some Bruckner, and I lost all of mine when my Mac died a few months ago. I'm listening now, and the quality is pretty great. The most surprising thing about this is that I (for the first time ever) suddenly don't mind the existence of MySpace.
posted by heyho at 11:11 AM on August 17, 2010

Oh god yes. Thank-you, my morning needed some awesome, and "Alarm (Allegro non troppo - Adagio..)" was precisely what the doctor ordered.

*still headbanging*
posted by coriolisdave at 4:04 PM on August 17, 2010

Want to hear some free, very good quality performances of dozens of chamber works? Wikipedia has dozens of them from the Gardner Museum. Not all potboilers either, many are less-seldom heard.
posted by Twang at 5:42 PM on August 17, 2010