Hard to fault your choice, this is excellent Chopin. However don't miss Moravec. IMHO its the best regardless of how you like your Chopin.
FWIW, in a modern recording its hard to beat Louis Lortie's Chopin on Chandos. These are my current favorites, i.e. 'go to', recordings. Lest I lead you astray, I do prefer a more masculine style over a more romantic style. |
I have "The Chopin Collection" by Rubinstein, but it is 11 cds. Wondering what I am missing? It is on RCA label.There are so many great recordings of Chopin by so many great pianists that I cannot begin to name a favorite.
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Cal91, I probably should have mentioned - re Moravec's Chopin, I started with his Nocturnes on an Electra Nonsuch disc(s) presently available of Amazon. Outstanding and well worth the price. |
Dont forget Antonio Barbosa in the Mazurkas..... A natural and humility, and rythmical sense outstanding.... My 2 best Chopin with Moravec....
In the roots system of Chopin’s Tree, one of his root is Domenico Scarlatti sonatas.... If you want to know why? Listen to the Zacharias version in 3 cd.... Pure marvel....My best Scarlatti pianist....Zacharias has forgot the virtuoso side and will deepen the pure interiority....Chopin get it immediately for sure....For example so good is Pogorelich Scarlatti and it is for sure, i prefer the poetic playing of Zacharias...
When someone must or may listen the same cd a thousand times his requirement are very different than when someone gives a few listenings only.... I discover gladly something new, but my listening is made of 80% of ancient favorites players or works that i had listen to hundred or thousand times....i owned 8000 cd and files....Most i had listen 1 or 2 times only.... Some thousand times, for example Bach.... I dream each day to discover something i will be pleased and able to listen to without end like Bach clavier works.... The Moravec and Barbosa Chopin are on this level for me....
My criteria is not then, is this interpretation good, but is this interpretation able to please me till my death each day, or each week, or each month, or each year? Because for sure we cannot listen to some works each day but only in some days and not other days... There exist many good interpretation of a work, but very few if not only one that will make you happy till death.....
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~~~Allan Pettersson~~~~ syms 5-15 |
@mahgister Hi I have been listening to Zacharias playing Scarlatti for a lot of the day on and off and have to say that I can see a lot of wonderful musicmaking there. The only thing I have to say is that he does play them quite literally with not a lot of feeling there but yes I can see why you are enamoured of them.
I have to pin my colours to another mast though, Mikhail Pletnev's accounts to me are quite literally poles apart with lots of colour injected and a blistering virtuoso technique. We must remember that Scarlatti was a virtuoso of the highest order and tasked with teaching a princess and later Queen of Portugal who was quite a virtuoso herself. In their day velocity was a pre requisite and a great few of his sonatas were written with that in mind. I have heard Pletnev play a lot of times but only heard him play Scarlatti twice and as encores. His first was the D minor one K517 and a blistering account it was and he was giving washes of colour with pedal being used liberally. The next one he played was the B minor K27 which I did not really appreciate from his record but live the accents on loud and soft playing was incredible. I have to say those two sonatas were what I had taken home with me that night. |
If you are listening to extra Beethoven this year, let me leave a plug here for Gustavo Dudamel's Eroica with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. Excellent! And to my ears he and the orchestra really nail the famous slow movement. |
jim
love pletnev!
and with Argerich too, eg, Cinderella
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@mahgister Hi I have been listening to Zacharias playing Scarlatti for a lot of the day on and off and have to say that I can see a lot of wonderful musicmaking there. The only thing I have to say is that he does play them quite literally with not a lot of feeling there but yes I can see why you are enamoured of them.
I have to pin my colours to another mast though, Mikhail Pletnev's accounts to me are quite literally poles apart with lots of colour injected and a blistering virtuoso technique.
Tough i love the poetic playing of Zacharias.... I credit your choice for Pletnev....Poetry+ virtuoso tech. Probably one of the best on piano, if not the best..... Thanks.... |
I can only say that over decades I have never heard Chopin played as wonderful as the early Pollini on EMI .
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+1 for Pletnev
Great musician and wonderful pianist.. |
@schubert Len I can't fault you on the pollini treasure , I think it was not long after that disc that he retired from the platform to study for a while longer. That was the worst thing he ever did in my opinion because he went to study with Michaelangeli for a while and when he emerged he was quite a different pianist , gone was that beautiful crystalline tone to be replaced with pure ice. As far as I am concerned He just wasn't the same. I probably said before that I heard him in Glasgow once and he played a Mozart Piano Concerto and I think he was well suited to it. He played the whole concert with not a finger out of place and some of the most perfect pianism I have ever seen , but cold as ice. Pity. |
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I have Pollini vinyl from both the EMI and DG eras and I got no quarrel with either, other than DGs' slightly cool tonal quality. As a matter of fact, it was the DG volume of Chopin Etudes that induced me to drag my childhood piano out of my parents' house and start going at it again. I may have mentioned this previously but I saw him live once. Utterly superb.
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He played the whole concert with not a finger out of place and some of the most perfect pianism I have ever seen , but cold as ice. Pity.
It was also my experience of him.....in cd....Not lived tough....Perfection is not enough... « Imperfection is the peak» René Char |
@mahgister I think you are absolutely right regarding his CD's , I also find them quite cold to listen to with the exception of Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka. He plays that piece as if The devil or in Scot's parlance ( Auld Nick - for you Len ) was sitting at the keyboard playing it himself. If poor old Arthur Rubinstein the dedicatee could have played it like that , but sadly that is the type of thing that Pollini excelled at. While on the subject of Pollini has anyone heard Pollini's latest Beethoven's last three piano sonatas, I wish I could say it was great but I found it quite difficult to listen to. That famous accuracy is gone and the pieces lack any cohesion and there are a few finger slips which I am putting down to age. Take Martha Argerich she is now over seventy five now and she plays like a 40 y.o. which I am sure most 40 year olds would love. |
Way back in the day, when the Penguin Classical Record Guide was riding high, Perahia and Pollini seemed to me to be represented on a lot of the same repertoire. Trying them both, I always preferred Perahia, because Pollini struck me as, yes, too cool in the interpretation. |
i second you....
Between Perahia and Pollini, the first has some magical sparkle that the other has not.... 2 great artists tough for sure.... |
OK, so I know I've already recommended this, but on a second listening I like it even more. Dudamel's Beethoven 3 with the Venezuela orchestra. It has everything you'd expect from a first-class international orchestra PLUS an inner enthusiasm and, yes, joy that I find truly infectious. Really worth a listen.
And while we're on the subject of recommendations, I think it was in this thread a while back that someone pointed to the Sibelius 1 + 7 on Ondine with Segerstram and Helsinki Philharmonic. Listening now and wow! Fabulous interpretation AND fabulous sound--that unheard of unicorn!
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Between Perahia and Pollini , no contest I would pick Perahia and day of the week. I have loved Perahia since the day he won the Leeds Piano Competition ( a long time ago ) and I have to admit he is my go to pianist for any Bach keyboard works. I have only heard him live once at Glasgow and it was the Goldberg Variations with some Bach / Busoni thrown in also. It was a wonderful performance with some sparkling pianism and for all Pollini's virtuosity it is Perahia I will always fall back on. |
You guys got me to put on a side of my three disc DG set of Pollini's Chopin Etudes. There's a skip in one of the cuts. Maurizio can't seem to get past one particularly fiendish passage. Maurizio! Que spagliato?
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now listening to Perahia's 2018 recording of Hammerklavier and Moonlight Sonatas
so fine, lively
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Helsinki Phil is a wonderful Band . I heard then do a Sibelius 2/ Vanska few years ago , didn’t come down for a week .
Perahia is excellent on Schubert as well . |
Not to mention Perahia’s lovely perusal of the complete Mozart Piano Concertos when he was a kid! |
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Jim, you never stop me from being amazed with your encyclopedic knowledge of all things classical pianistic One man in a hundred thousand !I send you a clip of a man among the very best singers and human beings every born in the USA, who was also beloved in Scotia and Wales. Wouldn’t surprise me if you have seen it or him , but just in case....... P.S . Joe hill was the greatest US Unionist of American miners , was charged with murder of someone in Utah , our most conservative state, and was hung in a matter of days . https://youtu.be/B0bezsMVU7c?t=4How beloved he was in Wales . https://youtu.be/H1hLPRnmAjw?t=6 { press the left bottom v starter not the big red one on top) |
Goodness me Len , Paul Robeson now there's a name from the past. As a kid in the fifties we had an old box of 78s in a cupboard and there were 2 or 3 Robesons there. I loved Ol Man River of course but the one that I was always playing was Trees which I really loved at the time . Of course father didn't like me playing the 78s too much as it played havoc with the stylus that was more suited to 45s and 33 1/3 but I didn't care it was better than his pipe band records so there was an uneasy truce that if I played my stuff when he was out it was OK. You know That film of him in Wales , I remember seeing it in a local cinema in it must have been about 1960 and I enjoyed it so much I hid in the toilets so as to see it again.
I have to say though that McCarthyism really crippled Robeson and they hit him where it hurt by making it impossible for him to get roles in films and in theatres. We all as counties have heinous things that we would rather forget, the Brits have a terrible past with imperialism look at what we did to India, appalling.
Now you talk about me knowing things, you are quite an erudite gent yourself. You have a nice week my friend and keep your "lugs" tuned.
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Jim , If I knew 1/10 of what you know in keyboard , I ’d know twice what I do know . In Early Music ........................ Hear is a "Tree " https://youtu.be/vOHekLZD5i4?t=2Off hand Jim , I’d say the English-Speaking land with the least blood on her hands is Canada .Gave the natives some bad times but no mass genocide and has tried hard to make amends . Nobody else has . I respect Canada . I would call England worse, or was the worse . I believe Scotland was just cannon fodder, but was proud of it because it had little else . What else is Scotland The Brave ? But as they say, We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns |
Perahia in Mozart concertos is my favorite Perahia....
To be direct i must say that Pollini nerver touch my heart anywhere.... |
@mahgister I entirely agree regarding Perahia , I find his brand of pianism far superior than Pollini's. Also I was on Idagio earlier and I saw Pollini's earlier Beethoven Piano sonatas and found them glacial but of course that is only my opinion as I am sure many people will be seduced by a wonderful technique , not me though. I also had a listen to Prahias new recording of the Hammerklavier Sonata and I was mighty impressed |
I used to go to Westerham regularly to gaze at the statue of General Wolfe in the middle of the village green. |
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Overly oblique reference to Plains/Heights of Abraham. |
Rachmaninoff 3rd.......The lovely ,lovely Beethoven .....Finish off with hmmmmm.....Copeland,Fanfare for the Common Man. |
Schnittke, Carter, Pettersson |
Here's another strong recommendation for a Beethoven 3, this time a semi-historical one to go with the modern one done by Dudamel + Venezuela.
Barbirolli, BBC Symphony Orchestra, 1967, paired with An Ellizabethan Suite arr. Barbirolli, issued by the Barbirolli Society and remastered by Dutton Laboratories using their CEDAR method. Splendid all round with a truly majestic slow movement.
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Bach clavier by Andras Schiff is a marvel of recoded engineering first and and interpretation second....
Barbirolli is a very great meastro indeed.... I am in love with his Mahler 5.... |
I am in my third hours of listening Bach Schiff playing and unable to go with any other files.... :)
Help me!
Each time i put this Schiff playing , i am trapped for 4 hours....
Proof that my embeddings audio system methods are at least minimally good because piano is very hard to make subtle with all his hues and shades of colors....
Or perhaps it is also the perfect recording of this cd.....If i want to keep some modesty..... :)
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@mahgister If you need a little break from Schiff and still need some Bach try The Goldberg Variations played by, Ekaterina Dershavina quite different from Schiff but also superb. It may be just what you are needing ,I love her playing. |
Ekaterina Dershavina
has also recorded 9 cds of Haydn, very nice.+ Alexy Stanchinsky, which i have not been able to find.+ Nikolay Medtner, 2 cds, unable to find.
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now listening to Dershavina's Stanchinskyopener sounds like Tom stalking Gerrysome beautiful serious sounds too
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Check alternative spelling of surname with z instead of s. |
@jcazador Funnily enough Jeremy I was expecting a lot more from Dershavina's Haydn but they weren't for me, I must admit I enjoy Hamelin more. Have a listen to Paul Lewis he is quite a star in them, oh and he has just released a recording of the Beethoven Bagatels which are really |
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Thanks Jim
Have Lewis's Haydn, very fine, also Schubert sonatas, Mussorsky Pictures,
Beethoven Sonatas, Diabelli Variations, Weber & Schubert sonatas.
Will have a search for those Bagatels.
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@jcazador Wow don't you have enough to get on with at the moment LOL. |
jim
always searching for what i have not heard
how about you?
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IF I see the name Barbirolli on anything I buy it .
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