Word: rachmaninoff
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last Friday evening Krystian Zimerman played before an audience that was suspicious of his tendency to cancel at the last minute. In the fall he bailed on an engagement to perform a Rachmaninoff concerto with the BSO and left many ticketholders scowling and cursing. This time around, playing explosively, he left ticketholders smiling and cursing the absence of a second encore...
Besides, working on the rough edge of nature offers its vagrant epiphanies. "One day," Chen recalls, "it started raining. We got on the bus, and everyone was so tired, they dozed off. Except for me; I'm an insomniac. I was listening to Rachmaninoff and staring out the window. The black clouds were rolling, but at the end of the horizon a strip of blue showed up, then a rainbow. It was very intense--strong and beautiful, like a gate to heaven. I woke everybody up, and we got it in the movie. So seldom do you see beauty face...
...more gusto from Ohlsson, whose suavity in these three miniatures was at times offputting. The Minute Waltz (at 1:53, mind you) sounded tossed-off, although with a hilarious ending, and the third of the set had nothing to recommend it. Only the ravishing C-sharp minor, trademark of Rachmaninoff and Rubinstein, demanded close listening. Ohlsson privileged the left hand at times when other pianists wouldn't, and sculpted a middle voice between the melodies...
...Godowsky--whose keyboard pyrotechnics lit up concert halls during the first 40 years of this century. He is fascinated by the piano's expressive range, its ability to produce almost orchestral varieties of sounds and colors, seemingly bound only by the performer's own limitations. These varied works--by Rachmaninoff, Alkan, Busoni, Godowsky and others--are wickedly difficult, yet Hamelin plays them, often at dazzling speeds, with color, power, a long line and unfailing elan. He also performs three of his own witty, equally difficult etudes inspired by Chopin and Rossini...
...becoming the greatest American pianist of the century when time ran out on William Kapell. Before he died in a 1953 plane crash at 31, he had everything: looks, charisma, unrivaled musicality, technique to burn. Now his complete recordings--concertos by Beethoven, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff, solos by Chopin, Debussy and Liszt, duet performances with Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose--have been reissued as a nine-disk boxed set, allowing a new generation to be dazzled by his recreative genius. Best of all is a live broadcast of the Copland piano sonata that seethes with passion and force. Hear...