Back in December we were talking about Underappreciated Recordings
and Underappreciated Works.  I nominated George Szell in Eine Kleine
Nachtmusik.

Look how clever I am!  The current BBC Music Magazine's cover
disc features none other than K525, EKN.  Also on the disc are K138,
Divertimento in F; and K261, Adagio in E for violin and orchestra.  Not
the most adventurous of programing, you say.  Well, maybe not.  But EKN
is beautifully played by The English Concert.  And there's a bonus to
this disc in the shape of a 27-minute, four-track analysis of EKN by
conductor Andrew Manze, who is also the violin soloist in K261.  While
Manze's talk is a little breathless and the reproduction is too echoey,
there is no doubting his enthusiasm for and knowledge of EKN, and to me
he makes his case that Nachtmusik is so much more than just a casual
piece to which we've grown overly accustomed.  He calls it (paraphrasing)
a masterpiece from a pen that literally dripped with masterpieces.  And
after all, there's a reason we're so familiar with it!

So if I'm so clever, why do I need a lecture disc to help me appreciate
EKN?  Well, I'm one of those who needs more than a little help to "get
it." And these discs do help, by at least getting you to think about a
piece in different ways.  I have all the discs in Ben Zander's ongoing
Mahler cycle, all of which contain lecture discs, and have learned a lot
from them.  The BBC MM issued an Elgar disc that had a lecture by Anthony
Payne.  I still have that, and need to pay more attention to it.

Can listmembers recommend any other lecture discs or audio supplements?
I'm talking about lectures specifically geared to a recording, not
something like Bernstein's Norton lectures.

Mitch Friedfeld