Word: concertos
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Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 opened the evening with bright and pleasant fervor. According to the program notes, this particular concer-to--like a good deal of his other pieces--was composed for Schumann's wife Clara, who performed as the soloist during its premeire on Dec. 4, 1845. Upon hearing the concerto, one cannot help but dream about what a wonderful and passionate performance the premiere must have been. One can hear Schumann's adoration for Clara etched into every movent, from the sparkling and brilliant "Allegro affettuoso" to the slower, sweeter "Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso...
...becomes easy to understand how his success has reached the point that it has. The sprightly romance of Schumann's piece came to vivacious, yet intricately beautiful life under Andsnes' care. With the rest of the orchestra perfectly accompanying but never overshadowing him, the Norwegian pianist played the Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 with the enchanting energy that Schumann must have intended the piece to be performed with...
...Gieseking's Debussy. But Deacon was too knowledgeable, and too wily, to select only the gems that every piano lover may already have. More than a quarter of the music in the collection was previously unavailable on CD, and some pieces, such as Clifford Curzon playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27, have never before been released commercially in any format. Deacon scoured the archives--and his own collection--for rare and historic performances. He passed over Alexis Weissenberg's famed 1971 recording of Scriabin's Nocturne for the Left Hand, and hunted down the master of Weissenberg's obscure...
...compilations, as well as a wonderful trip through the history of piano interpretation. Deacon has included performances of the same repertoire played by different artists to show the dramatic shifts in style and temperament through the century. The collection contains a recording of Vladimir Horowitz playing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 during World War II. The performance is fanatical and wild--in sharp contrast to Van Cliburn's rendition, recorded after his famed competition win in Moscow in 1958, which is tender, lyrical and full of the charm that captivated the Russians. Similarly, Great Pianists traces the varying interpretations...
...perhaps more in Beethoven's intended spirit. Conservative in the sense that they played it up-tempo, the Sydney Symphony brought the piece closer to what Beethoven probably had planned and closer in sound to Mozart. Reserved in the sense that the orchestra played No. 2 as a concerto and not as a symphony. De Waart's conducting gestures were never forced, were never angularly abrupt. This added to the fact that the muted vibrations of the orchestra and the sweet mellow tone of the piano actually, at times, cast more silence than resonance. Certainly, it was somewhat harrowing...