Levinson & Quasthoff Mozart's"Per Questa Bella Mano" w/ Muti

[hobocan22]

uust a shitty recording the bass player is fine

[viennachan1]

And by the way, Streicher was a true great artist, one of the very few bass solosts who had soul, taste, and a deep understanding of style. There is an abundance of bassists with fast fingers and hysterical vibrato out there, but for sheer class there is nobody like Streicher. He was not a bass player. He was a musician

[viennachan1]

Easy piece if you tune the bass right. Hard to understand why players nowadays still stay blissfully unaware that this was written for a different tuning. And some sense of style would be more natural to achieve with the right tuning as well. It's hard being on stage as a soloist, but you can make it less hard by doing your homework.

[alysonfrancag]

Divine voice! Thanks for sharing.

[TZEITEL10]

@alysonfrancag I think Thomas has an angelic voice,truly beautiful.

[hdt1635]

I don't play double bass but I suspect that Mozart wrote this for a different size bass or perhaps, a different string set up.

[epouvantay]

Ich weiss gar nicht wer von beiden mich mehr langweilt. Dieses Geschrumme zu dem Gequake naja...

[Agorante]

Wonderful performance by Quasthoff but the video and sound are out of sync. This is quite easy to fix. I'd do it myself but then it would exist as another version and all these comments would not point to it.

[Aleksei5]

Is there a video of the full performance? I'd love to hear both the "Così dunque tradisci" and "Alcandro lo confesso" from this performance)))

[juancillo]

the bass is so out of tune

[g4thz]

He's straightening his tone on the up beats. Keep yr breath moving, Tommy!

[AkhmedSync]

Somebody needs a reminder of how to play bass... It sounds like he is playing in the wrong key.

[bassivus]

@AkhmedSync

Let's hear you!

[mordred1971]

che eleganza nel canto.....meraviglioso...

[MariadelMonaco]

"Nasenrachenraumresonanzankopp­lung" :-). Dieser Begriff bzw. dieses Wort existiert in der deutschen Sprache überhaupt nicht. Müssen Sie dabei nicht selber lachen? Das kann doch nicht ihr ernst sein!

[Ricocarrino1]

@MariadelMonaco

ich weiß nicht, wo und in welchem Wörterbuch Sie nachgeschaut haben, um behaupten zu können, dieses Wort existiere in der deutschen Sprache nicht. Es ist ein Spezialwort aus der Gesangstechnikvermittlungsbemü­hungserklärungsfindungsversuch­ssprache.

Man braucht für die Resonanzankopplung aber auch eine Nasenrachenraumresonanzankoppl­ungskupplung, oder einen Nasenrachenraumresonanzankoppl­ungskupplungspuffer zum Schonen der Stimmbänder.

[MariadelMonaco]

@Ricocarrino1

Ah lieber Rico, Sie retten mir den Tag ;-). Ohne ihre qualitativ-hochwertigen Erläuterungen würde ich jetzt noch im Dunkeln tappen. Sie sollten ihr eigenes Buch schreiben, mit dem Titel " Die Nasenrachenraumresonanzankoppl­ung und ich - Die Weiterentwicklung des Bernoulli-Syndroms". Ich traue mich kaum zu fragen, darf ich die Abbildungen verfassen um die Erklärungen noch anschaulicher zu machen? Damit würden Sie mir eine große Freude bereiten :-).

[vocede]

Sehr gut gesungen!! Durch eine konsequente schmale U-Mundstellung bei allen Vokalen wird ein sehr guter Vokal- und Registerausgleich mit Nasenrachenraumresonanzankoppl­ung erreicht.

[Ricocarrino1]

@vocede Ich muß hier vocede unterstützen!

Die eher schmalbreite U-Stellung hilft durch Verknüpfung der Nasenzungenverschlußwurzel mit dem Glottisperipheriegelenk einen guten Registerangleichungsprozeß. Es entsteht das sogenannte Juhu-ing. Die sanften Schaukelbewegungen des Sängers, die man für Startvorbereitungen eines Albatrosses halten könnte, sind eine natürliche Abwehrgegenbewegung gegen das von Hans Josef Kasper in seinem Buch "Singen und Flugzeuge" erfundene Bernoulli-Syndrom.

[Ricocarrino1]

He sings like my old friend KERMIT

[franco96544]

Thomas, sei un mago degli idiomi: anche italiano e con la pronuncia PERFETTA..

[sopherl46]

In tiefster Verehrung für diesen Künstler

[samdajellybeenie14]

WHAT A VOICE! and mr. levinson is amazing

[lznclsn]

I was totally captivated the first time I heard Quasthoff performing this piece so much so that I didn't even notice his disability - what a voice! This is now my favourite Mozart aria.

[picapin]

why can't he stop moving???

[stybboon]

yeah he is looking very funny while moving ^^

[tedxprada]

I feel vertigo with his moving.

[yomerito77]

vertigo ?? hahaha stupid !! see an ARTIST singing, from his heart and his soul, what the hell matters with his motion? tedxprada: use your ears! its great ! try it !!!

[frederickbass]

As for the nay sayers of Levinson. He is a beautiful player, maybe not his best outing, but this is one of the most difficult pieces I've ever seen because it was not composed for the modern bass but rather an 18C bass with a different tuning. Playing it on a modern bass is unfortunately not that easy.

[sirwootalot]

Considering the piece, I think Mr. Levinson played quite well here.

[queenoftheuniverse]

I am shocked by Levinson's playing here. usually, I just love what i here. It's not so much the intonation as the fact that he seems to be truly be struggling. He's just sawing away at it. And, sorry, but a performance that has your audience suffering with you is a failure. Better to not perform it at all.There was not a measure of Levinson's playing I could enjoy. Fortunately Quathoff's performance was radiant. I'm sure someone somewhere plays the bass obbligato in the 18c tuning.

[odysseia4]

The very MrLevinson is maybe the best double bassist ever i just love watching his playing. He is one of the Rare bass players who can play the bass with touching sound like Menuhin did in his youth with violin.

He plays ingeniously.

He has soul in his music, not just right notes there, as so many boring modern players and his sound is unique lovely bass sound no one can play like him. His bass sounds fantastic when he plays the solo alone! He is only out of tune when he plays with singer

[queenoftheuniverse]

I love Levinson's Kol Nidre. This I don't love at all. Just not his piece.

By the way there are other wonderful bassists out there. Joel Quarrington for one. And I always liked Ludwig Streicher.

[odysseia4]

Well, you dont understand anything about classical music i guess. Thecnicall this is not 100% but artistically its 200%. I think Levinsons playing is from heaven. Could u play Mozart this lovely with the other foot in the grave?

By the way, those Streicher and Quarrington are virtuosos not artists. Art is something very rare ppl can do. In my point of view Levinson belongs to the greatest artists in classical playing.

Anyway opinions are opinions not onions.

[queenoftheuniverse]

My friend, we will have to agree to disagree. Mr. Levinson is a fine bassist for the Romantic repertoire, but this piece JUST DOES NOT SUIT HIM. The vibrato is too wide for Mozart and the double stops are handled to aggressively for the style and period, to say nothing of the lyrics! The fact that I don't like how Levinson plays this one piece does not mean I disrespect him as a musician, I am just reporting what hear.

more to follow. . .

[odysseia4]

Well, I disagree that Mozart should be played as it was played during Mozarts time or the way u would like it to be played. Mozart can be played personally.

Its very boring to listen Mozart without person or soul. Levinson plays with really personal sound. Its incredible. He must have been practising the sound quite a much.

And the vibrato is excellent and the singing tone of his sound is absolutely unique.

Some tones are out of tune but it doesnt affect the whole artistical impression.

[WhoYaTryingToKid]

If you want to hear a real artist / virtuoso both of you should listen to the bass player in Dead Kennedys

[tuckefresh]

@odysseia4 Dude, he sucks. Get over your lame explanations.

[zach100590]

maybe he should of practiced more

[rapfan228]

yeah, levinson's amazing, my teacher studied with him

[jabsomdoc]

yeah! i can't believe what shitty playing is coming from a principle bass player with the NY phil.

[bassivus]

@jabsomdoc

Post your version!

[AkhmedSync]

@bassivus

I don't have a video of it. I'm a singer, and do not play contrabass. But still, come on. This is Eugene Levinson. He's slacking off hardcore. There is an audio only video in related videos of Quasthoff again and a considerably more successful obbligato performance.

[bassivus]

@AkhmedSync

If you are performer, than you know what live performance means! Also I'm sure Mr. Levnson wasn't very happy with this performance...but you can't give your best every time.

This obbligato is not written for Double bass but against Double bassists :) There are A LOT of pieces that are many, many times easier to perform but sound more virtuosic and at the end pay off much more!

[mrpossibilities]

Mannnn, it wasn't until the middle of the video that I realized that the baritone singer suffers from that strange bone deformation. Now I admire him even more for achieving that level of professionalism

[sarahcyn]

Quasthoff was a victim of Thalidomide, the anti-morning-sickness drug which caused terrible deformities in babies in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the UK the families got compensation after a long battle, but not in Germany. His early life was truly dreadful but he is incredibly positive and considers himself "lucky"!

[mrpossibilities]

Thank you for that short bio. Yeah, he's definitively in my "hero" list, next to Michel Petrucciani

[sarahcyn]

:-) you are welcome. Oh and in case you were wondering, he's happily married to a gorgeous wife :-)

[mrpossibilities]

Wow, so one more thing to envy him for and admire him as well :)

[sirwootalot]

He can do more with one lung then most can do with two.

[bassfanne45]

@sirwootalot, Yes, indeed. He's one of the finest bass-baritones ever. Voices like hios come along once or twice in a century.

[BassplayerTCL]

bass kicks ass

[paulostroff99]

Superb singing,playing and conducting! Bravo! TY James.

[Dobrib]

Wonderful!Bravo!TY

[Daisy4dk]

This is amazing. Bravo Quasthoff, Levinson, Muti.