University is wasted on the young - apart from a few exceptions most students would be better working (at anything!) for a few years and rolling up aged 21 or more and taking it from there. We even have some who come to Scottish Universities at 16 - crazy (mostly). I'm lucky to have a University job tho'- not perfect but I can't imagine working in a job where success is really measured in the number of pounds you earn ( for someone else usually!). I diverge again...

Back to the music. First time through the Anda and my imperssion is 'virtuoso'. Technically I think it is a very good recording, and the playing of both the orchestra and the pianist are very tight (in the accuracy sense). Some of the slow playing in the middle is very beautiful almost oozing or dripping like warm honey. So I like this CD but is hasn't (yet?) grabbed the heartstrings in the way of the Haskil.

As I started to type this reply I put the Haskil back on for the first time tonight and the hairs rose on my neck as the piano comes in - it really is sublime.

Ian

Dear Ian,

Spot on. Not that I was experimenting on you, but in the 21st Pf concerto that is just what is required, more or less perfection, and a non-sentimental treatment of the slow movement, which here is achingly beautiful, more or less as a succesion of sounds, the beauty lying solely in the music, which is best left to speak entirely for itself. Anda was a technical wizard, but not shallow musically, as time will show you I am sure, but as artists, I think Haskil is the one with a humanity and warmth on my wavelength, more than any other pianist except perhaps for Edwin Fischer and sometime MJ Pires.

You will rightly have concluded that without music I would go mad and find little use for the daily grind!

Also, there are some couplings here, which you will enjoy a good deal as well. Thanks for taking my recomendations. I hope they bring as much long term pleasure as the Abbado set in its turn, and sit alongside each other for many years.

All the best from Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
.... Thanks for taking my recomendations.

And thanks for making them and your inputs tonight. It does though feel like a whole new world - previously I thought one version of a piece was enough for anyone but clearly this is not so.

Maybe in a few months I'll come back looking for some more recommedations but for now I'll settle for getting to know what I have. Trouble is time - I'm getting my jazz horizons expanded thanks to one of the secretaries at work (who turns out to everyone's surprise to be a mean closet saxophinist ) and I like uncovering modern vocal music too. A wonderful "problem" to have but frustrating too.

Anyhow better sleep now as I need to look less bleary-eyed than the students in the morning!

regards

ian
PS A fortnight ago I went on spec. at lunchtime to a short recital at the Uni - 4 singers from the 'Dunedin Consort' and they sang some Palastrina church music - I've never heard anything like it. Unaccompanied and divine. They sing again tomorrow and I'm expecting to be searching for some CDs thereafter !

quote:

Only one performance I know equals it, and that was Edwin Fischer on HMV with the LPO, where Fischer not only is soloist but also conductor, recorded in 1933 on 78s, and not surprisingly not currently available! Mind it is worth snaffling if it ever shows up. That was my first experience of a Mozart Piano Concerto, and from a 78 set made as stated on the paper sleeves, 'under Wartime utility conditions,' which shows an interesting attitude in times of supply difficulty!

I am waiting for this to re-appear myself.

Dear Fredrik,

Is this the Edwin Fischer recording you're mentioning? It's from 1933 with the LPO:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000006PD0/qid=1139842...ical&v=glance&n=5174

Best regards
Espen

Dear Epsen,

That is indeed it! Isn't that exciting! I have not had the chance to listen to that old performance for a good fifteen years, since I last had a working 78 TT! The review makes plain what I said of it as well which is nice. Fischer was one of the greatest painists to have made records, in my view. His view is essentially direct and unfussy, but very subtle in tonal gradation and the most stylish rubatto, actually a bit like a male version of the perforamnces by my other Mozart hero, Clara Haskill!

Bit pricey, but I shall have to get it won't I?

Thanks for the information. I'll get a mate to order it on his card this weekend. Yikes, spending money on things I can't afford, and which I don't actually need! Cheers from Fredrik

Dear Epsen,

I just went to the link again, and had a listen to the samples. Just as I remember, but without the bacon! How do people find these things!? Splendid, most definately splendid! Fredrik

PS: It was also very nice to realise that the coupling is the 22nd Concerto in E flat. I have Brendel on Vox in this and that is worth finding as well Then the two lovely lollipops. What we miss when such pieces appear in large collections rather than as enourse or individual issues (as they would have been on 78!) But buriied with twenty other things we miss them. At that time these little things would have been tagged onto a session almost without thought, being a favourite of the artist concerned and performed as such, and they either saw the light of day and were published, or were lost. But what survives makes me think thes old artists had great fun hunting little things out, and all the better for us that they re-emerge now.

Dear Fredrik,

Do you know if Clara Haskill recorded the K488?

IanGtoo,

If you don't have it already, you must try Mitsuko Uchida’s recording of Nos.20 and 21 with
Jeffery Tate and the ECO.

Brendel/Mackerras for the D minor. Incomparable.

EW

Schiff/Vegh from DECCA

Djorg

I think Todd Arola mentioned, Robert Casadesus’ 1956 recording with George Szell and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, should be a reference recordning. So I wonder if this is it:

http://www.alapage.com/-/Fiche/MusiqueClassique/503914/...esus%20mozart&sv=X_L

quote:

Originally posted by Basil:
Dear Fredrik,

Do you know if Clara Haskill recorded the K488?

Dear Basil,

Yes to that! And it is something I count as very special. I once had Dennis Matthews playing it, and have Solomon as well (miss the Matthews recording), but CH is indeed the finest in my view, even among such exalted company!

With the Ninth Concerto in E flat, and the Rondo in A KV. 386 (wonderful little find this!), it was recorded by Philips and issued on CD number 420 782-2 in 1987, but if you can find it or a re-release of it is absolutuely all encompassing, in this, I think my favourite of among Mozart's Piano concertos!

Good luck tracking it down.

The orchestra is the VSO and Paul Sacher, the composer, very fine conductor, and friend of CH is accompanist, except in the Rondo where Bernhard Paumgartner achieves just a splendid a result. Good 1954 mono, if that makes any different.

All the best from Fredrik

Dear Rubio,

I hope Todd sees this, as I cannot answer the question! Todd! Please look!

All the best from Fredrik

Many thanks Fredrik,

I have the Solomon recording of K488 on an EMI double album, along with No. 15 K450, No. 24 K491 and two Sonatas Nos.11 & 17 K331 and K576 respectively.

It is my favourite Mozart Piano concerto too.

I first heard it on Radio3, many years ago. It was in a program about a Russian, female pianist from the late 40's I think.
My recollection of this is quite sketchy, but basically, Stalin heard her playing the K488 in a radio broadcast and summoned her for a private performance of the piece.

She refused, cursing "his black heart" and denouncing him for the evil man he was!

Amazingly, she survived this, and out lived him. When staff found him dead in his study, a recording of the concerto, by the same pianist was found on his Gramophone.

Hopefully, someone with a better memory than I, may remember who the pianist was!

Basil,

I heard the play, but have no idea who the pianist was! Isn't that strange? No tele, helps of course! I hope you find CH playing the A Major. Now that is music, actually beyond descrption! Fredrik

I find myself watching less and less TV these days, I'd dispense with it altogether if it weren't for the live Tennis I'd miss.

Dear Basil,

I am working horrid hours at the mo' hence my crazy times for posting. I want my evenings back as I so enjoy the radio. Radio Three for concentrated listening and Four, because it is so broad, and often rather funny as well!

It's a shame I could not work out who that Russian pianist was. Poor old Rostropivich felt the hard side of the regime's hand too, so I hope that artists get a better time in the new Russia.

All the best from Fredrik

Here is the Haskil/Sacher 488 A Major (coupled with the 9th concerto):

http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/hnum/9701713/rk/home/rsk/hitlist

It was the only place I found it, and in such cases I order it immediately .

The Deutsche Grammophon website details a live recording by Pollini playing and conducting No 21 (K467) with the Vienna Phhilharmonic last year. But no forthcoming release details.

Graham

Basel--wouldn't surprise me if the Russian pianist was Maria Yudina. Stalin loved her playing and she apparantly hated him and told him off whenever she could, and lived to tell about it. Her Goldberg variations and Diabelli variations on the Great Pianists of the Century Series on EMI on fabulous.

That's her, I put the name into MSN and found this site.

Many downloads, including a recording of the Mozart K488 from 1943. The recording was made on 78 rpm upon josef Stalin's personal request overnight. He may have been a complete bastard, but he had taste in music!

Thank you oldnslow.