Sure, after you upload it to youtube, could you PM me the link? I won't be able to listen for a few days and I fear it will get buried in the thread.
Will do. I received the Angelich box today. It's very pink A bit disappointed there was no PS3, Op.5 but that's fine. It will probably be a while before I get to it, I've listened to a ton of Brahms recently.
I like the first two, but the third is IMHO a masterpiece Also my single favorite piece from the Katchen Brahms set.
2 CD set of Richter playing Scriabin, released by Praga. No recording dates that I can find or even a listing on Praga's website so I don't know if this is unreleased music or released by someone else. https://www.amazon.com/Richter-Plays-Scriabin-Sviatoslav/dp/B075KXKXFH/
This was released in Europe last month. I found several sites carrying it, but none has any info about the content/recording date(s).
This is one that interests me because IMHO it's not too common to find Richter playing Scriabin on good sounding transfers. And to have two entire discs of it could be pretty pretty pretty good.
Thanks, I had avoided it since it's on Music & Arts. Edit: I will email Praga about that release and post back what they say about it.
I don't blame you, but in this case they did a decent job. It's the best sounding source I have heard for those performances.
I also try to avoid M&A as much as possible, but it was the only way for me to get Arturo Toscanini's 1939 Beethoven cycle. I had my eyes on Immortal Performances' box, but when it turned out it was released on CD-R I went for M&A's 2013 remaster.
How does it sound? Immortal said they would email me when they put that 1939 cycle back in print. That was over 6 months ago when I emailed them.
I've only listened to parts of it once; it sounded OK, but that's all I can say. Richard Caniell's IP remasters may well sound better, but those CD-Rs are a very negative point for me; I'm not prepared to pay CAD 110 plus hefty shipping and import charges for CD-Rs.
Do you mind posting the recording dates from this set? Praga didn't get back to me yet but I preordered the double CD I posted about from ImportCDs. I will post the details of the CD when I get it. I also bought the Gilels Melodiya box and have listened to a few discs, sound quality is comparable to the Richter Melodiya box and mastering is decent. edit: Now playing Vitaly Margulis Scriabin (except Op.23). He is one of the great Scriabin interpreters.
"From a public performance given in Warsaw, Poland, on October 27, 1972" I should quickly add two things - it doesn't sound like a 1972 recording, it sounds a bit older and Richter's best performances are often not in the best sound. Glad you got your box in one piece! Mine arrived in shambles, so it went back. Before it went back, however, I listened to some of it and found the sound (and performances) to be a degree or more lower than the Richter set.
Thanks very much! Will keep the thread updated if ImportCDs is able to fill the preorder, it was only $23 and change and they didn't charge for shipping since I bought a couple of other boxes. I recall from the mega box discussion thread that yours arrived in shambles (I've seen a couple of others like this), and you said you sent it back without listening to any of the discs? I was a bit reluctant given the amount of Beethoven but found several of those performances to be very good. In general I don't find Gilels to be at the level of Richter, but still enjoy his playing very much.
Can't go wrong with a Richter purchase. Of the 300 or so discs I have of his, maybe 5 turned out to be duds. Well, let's just say I didn't listen to them at the time. I like a number of his recordings and I have a number of them, but I don't identify with his playing as much as other pianists (like Richter, Cherkassky, Cortot, Moiseiwitsch, Moravec and Kemal Gekic.)
I enjoyed this interpretation and the sound of the piano on the Grandes Etudes, Op. 76 is, well, grand. Alessandro Delijavan Alkan: 3 Grand Etudes, Op. 76; Sonatine; 2 Pieces, Op. 60 Piano Classics, 2013
I said no more Brahms, but one of the Gilels CDs from the Melodiya box had the 4 Ballades. So I cracked open the Angelich box and played them as well, two great performances, the major differences is Gilels is a bit more brisk with the tempi and Angelich is more percussive in his playing. Nod to Angelich for capturing the spirit of the music more. Overall this is a very nice package and for how little it cost and the size of it I was expecting plain white CD sleeves and it was nice to see that they were original jackets, or as much as the term "jacket" can be used for CD era recordings On the Gilels disc really nice performances on the rest of the CD with the Chopin and Schumann. For my tastes I generally find myself preferring live recordings where two excellent performances for a piece exist.
Considering that I sometimes find Gilels uncomfortably close to my tolerance level for percussive playing, that's a scary thought! But hard, bright tone is the fashion these days and has been for a long time, something for which I blame Horowitz. I suspect not what Brahms and company, all products of the Romantic era's fixation on tone production, would have expected--but they're all dead, and I suppose modern players must satisfy modern taste. Turning to a player whose tone generally tended well to the "rich" side, had a bit of a disappointment last night. I revisited (and copied) the early Vox LP of Friedrich Wuhrer in the Dvorak pno. cto. (Rudolf Moralt conducting the Vienna Sym.--not Phil.--Or.). I vaguely remembered not being much taken with it when I'd last--and, I think, first--played it ages back, and alas last night's outing did not change the verdict. Somehow the whole affair just never got off the ground, and Wuhrer, whose pianism I value for its intensity, sounded, well, uninvolved. Perhaps the generally weak, distant, low level recording, with the piano set far back, had something to do with that; I'll give the thing one more time as copied, with the level brought substantially up, before writing it off. Still, as I say, a disappointment.
I'd say the percussive playing is in general the Russian/Eastern Bloc style though IMO Richter and Gilels have much more depth to their playing than Horowitz for the majority of composers, Gilels is pretty varied on these later live recordings. The primary difference here is the tempi where Angelich allows more atmosphere to build and for me that is in the spirit of Op.10.
Latter day Russian/Eastern Bloc style, I'd say, or maybe even latter day Russian/Eastern Bloc "virtuoso" style. Listen to older Russian-born pianists, like Moiseiwitsch or Cherkassky; Hungarians like von Dohnanyi; or Poles like Koczalski or, yes, Paderewski or Artur Rubinstein, and you won't hear percussive playing at all, or at least only as a very occasional accent deliberately applied. And even among more modern players, it ain't necessarily so; I have a recording of the Brahms vln. stas. with Soviet-born Bella Davidovich doing keyboard honors for her son Dmitri Sitkovetski, and the tone is as buttery and warm and lush as can be--one reason that recording is my favorite of those works, moreso even than the "historical" recordings in my collection.
