Listening to "Bartok - The Piano Concertos" conducted by Pierre Boulez on DG. No. 1 - Krystian Zimerman and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra No. 2 - Lief Ove Andsnes and the Berliner Philharmoniker No. 3 - Helene Grimaud and the London Symphony Orchestra
I have 1 and 5. 5 is good. The 1 is imo the best version put on Record. The begining is pretty unbeatable.
Listening to "Stella Maris" performed by Trio Mediaeval on ECM. Sungji Hong: Missa Lumen de Lumine (2002) and 12th/13th Century Music from England and France.
Listening to "Bach - Sonatas" performed by Lara St. John (violin) and Marie-Pierre Langlamet (harp) on Ancalagon.
First listen to "Sigismondo D'India - Madrigali, Arie e Baletti" performed by Ensemble Elyma on Tactus. Featuring Matelda Viola, Paola Ronchetti (sopranos)
Looking forward to hearing Khatia Buniatishvili perform in a 500-seat hall outside of Boston later this month. Her Pictures is, well, unlike any other. (Her picture is pretty good, too.)
Listening to "Franz Liszt" performed by Khatia Buniatishvili on Sony. Liebestraum Sonata in M minor Mephisto Waltz No. 1 La lugubre gondola Prelude and fugue in A minor (after Bach)
The -3 suffix was used for some kind of format, but I don't remember what exactly. It obviously didn't catch on.
Compared two exceptional performances of the Waldstein. Rudolf Serkin's mono recording still remains my overall favorite but this disc with Maria Tipo is very good. The downside being you can hear birds chirping in the distance in the slow movement. Now listening to Bartok String Quartets 5 and 6 by the Tatrai Quartet.
Looks like a good program, I will see if I can make this one. I'm not such a big fan of Mechanics Hall for acoustics and sight lines.
Listening to "Schubert - Works For Violin And Piano" performed by Pamela & Claude Frank on Arte Nova.
It's actually at Tuckerman Hall, a venue which I'd never heard of despite having spent a lot of time in Worcester over the years. (The hall is near the Art Museum and just off Main St.). The balcony is sold out.... I find it rather surprising that Khatia and her management can't pull off Symphony, or Jordan, or even Mechanics Hall. I figure the concert will either be a blast or a complete disaster, nothing in between.
For some reason I thought it said Mechanics Hall when I did a search, I've never been to Tuckerman Hall either. From what I have heard her playing is on the brisker side and she does blur/make mistakes in life performances, but even the great Martha Argerich does it in her Lugano recordings
Having watched a number of her Youtube videos, I'm far from convinced about her interpretive choices-- but at least she takes risks. At least she's doing something different with, say, Pictures at an Exhibition, and can justify making the umpteen hundredth recording of the piece. Maybe her success testifies to public boredom with the same old, same old. (That, and the dresses.) She also has an enormous grasp of and capacity to project color. With her, it's not all about dynamics and tempo changes, seems to me. The colors she produces are exceptional. The upside: Argerich; the downside: Lang Lang....
I’d really like to find out, though. All of my Google searching was in vain, but it’s a hard thing to google, admittedly. What other music format was there in the early 80s that was considered even more important than cassette? Or maybe it was something video-related?
Very interesting on that second point on color, I wonder if this is why she chose Liszt to make her debut recording? I haven't heard any of her studio albums yet just sampled what I heard on Youtube when @Bachtoven posted that album last year. I hope she chooses to play the repeat in the exposition in D960.
