<p>Okay, well I like Truls Mork and Rostropovich the best for cello. I haven't heard Mork's Bach but I'm curious, and I haven't seen it in stores online or offline so maybe it's to be released soon. He has a gorgeous tone with amazing clarity. I recommend his Dvorak Concerto and Tchaikovsky Rococo Vars, and everything of his I have heard I have liked either the most of any or at least near the top. I want to check out his Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata CD, because I love the piece and I think he'd play it well. His Prokofiev Symphony Concertante and Brahms Sonatas have incredible clarity. Nobody can play fast notes on the cello that speak like that. Now on Rostropovich, he is one of the most tasteful cellists I have ever heard. Not tasteful meaning bland interpretations with sparing vibrato and a lack of daring. By tasteful I mean incredibly musical and natural. He also has a gorgeous tone. Especially his G#, I know it's funny, but truthfully it is so beautiful on his A string. You can hear his amazing tone and musicality in his Saint-Saens Concerto, which is the best recording of it in my opinion. His Bach is only okay, but the rest of his recordings make up for it. His Beethoven Sonatas are the best I have heard, and I have listened to so many in search of a good one, because to me hardly anyone plays them well. He is the only person with good musicality throughout, not playing sloppy and cheezy like Maisky and not playing too slowly like everyone always does on the third sonata in A Major. His Dvorak and any of the concertos are absolutely great, of course. And he even plays Schubert cello quintet well with the Emerson String Quartet (an awesome string quartet, too).</p>
<p>I like some things by some artists. I like Pieter Wispelwey's Bach Suites (look it up in iTunes: "did you mean 'Dispenser'?" goodness me). I also like his Prokofiev, Shosty, and Britten Sonatas recording, and his pianist is phenomenal with such amazing piano colors with articulation. That is chamber music rather than accompaniment, great.</p>
<p>I don't like Yo-Yo Ma. His Dvorak Concerto is horrendous, and he has a bad tone on many of his standard classical recordings, and he plays Beethoven Sonatas badly. Don't listen to his Beethoven third cello sonata in A major or you'll be poisioned like I once was. His second theme in the Dvorak concerto second movement made me frantic when I desperately tried to make it stop while looking for the stop button. Apparently he has discovered it is adapted from a song that was a favorite of Dvorak's love and cellist who died. He plays it like a tenor who is so sad that he's choking and can't control his vibrato and should fall of a cliff or stage to end his misery (and mine, please).</p>
<p>On Mischa Maisky: sometimes he has a warm tone. And sometimes his tone makes me want to hurl. It's like in Shakespeare the honey in the throat coming back up in rage like a mushroom cloud, all happening in the space of one note, but wait, the next note is still coming, when it starts all over again. So much for continuity and simplicity in a phrase. But his fashion sense and kinky relationship it seems with Martha Argerich is highly amusing.</p>
<p>On modern popy music, I agree. Who is Gavin McGraw? I don't know but it's no good. And Avvril Lavigne or however it's spelled sucks majorly. And who makes that song that's like "if I gave it all up for one thing, wouldn't that be something. . . I don't want to know, but I think I know, but I just hate how it sounds. . .? That song is so bad. The lyrics are awful andd the melody matches the awfulness of the words it goes with. And Nickleback is so terrible. "Walks like summer and talks like June. . . looking for yourself out there. . ." Bad bad bad bad. If I get a song stuck in my head I'll be mad. I am finding, however, that I enjoy the bad pop from my youth just for fun. Like Ace of Base and No Doubt. That stuff is terrible but I like it because it's funny hehe. "All that she wants is another baby uh-oh-oh. . ."</p>
<p>Pop (it's clasic rock, mostly) I do like: Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young), Beatles, Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, The Who. . . . The difference is that they ccan write melodies and they can sing the melodies they write. Crosby Stills and Nash can really sing. They write some great choral chords and chord sequences. I love "Another Sleep Song" and "Blackbird" and "Song Without Words (Tree with no Leaves)" and "Guinnevere" and lots of others because the singing and the writing is great. The Beatles, yeah do I need to explain? I love "Because" and ""Golden Slumbers" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Here Comes the Sun" and "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Here, There, and Everywhere" and "For No One" etc. And The Beach Boys have some great melodies and singing, too, especially "Wouldn't it be Nice" and "God Only Knows," which has great singing in the early middle, you'd hear how good it is right away if you listened to it. I also like jazz, like Glenn Miller and Bill Evans Trio, and there's a new group that I like, too, which I found on iTunes, the Bob James Trio. I don't know much about jazz, but I do like some standard stuff and the stuff that isn't lame. There's a lot of lame "jazz" out there. Also have you heard Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band? My trombonist friend just got me into them a few days ago.</p>