Music: Classical
Beethoven: 'The 5 Piano Concertos & Choral Fantasy'
Emanuel Ax. Andre Previn. Zubin Mehta
RCA Red Seal 'Complete Collections' boxed set, compiled 2003.
I am no expert on classical music, and so will not even begin to attempt a technical review of this recording. All I can really say is that I have been listening to Beethoven's piano concertos for the past 30 years, and I have a soft spot for them. I was introduced to them in a previous life, when someone who knew them inside out and back to front played them to me incessantly. Even so, although I had already grown to love and appreciate the familiarity of these concertos, it still wasn't until I heard the Emanuel Ax recordings that I fell completely under their spell; especially Concerto No. 4, which has always been my favourite. I am not being in the least bit original when I refer to the poetic lyricism with which Ax plays this piece, and when I listen to these CDs I feel like I'm sitting in a small concert hall, several rows from the front, with an unusually quiet audience around me. And a very comfortable seat, to boot!
This boxed set is a collection of studio and live recordings made in the 1980s, and is quite different from the 1970s Deutsche Grammophon recordings I was so familiar with. FR
La Folia
Gregorio Paniagua, Atrium Musicae de Madrid
Harmonia Mundi: Musique d'abord HMA1951050 (1982)
Paniagua and friends at play with the 16th century dance hit Folia. This is a most eccentric album, packed full of strange and wonderful music and sounds. It also happens to be one of the most exciting and dynamic recordings I have ever heard, despite being over a quarter of a century old. Hats off to Jean-Francois Pontefract, who recorded it. Test your system's dynamics with the gunshots on track 4, your high frequencies on track 7. And then there's track 12 (the bells, the bells!), to say nothing of the cleaning lady's hoover or the landrover in search of the party animals...
Beware the versions on offer: If you have or can find the original CD (HMC901050, or better yet the vinyl) you're lucky. For years that was that... Then came an SACD re-mastered release (HMC801050). Oh dear! Avoid: Compressed, all the life squashed out. But then up pops a budget re-release (HMA1951050), completely un-messed around with. It's fine. Very Fine. PB
Mahler Symphony No. 1
Solti / LSO
Decca: Legends 458 622-2 (1964)
I'm not sure how objective I can be about this recording, as I first encountered it in Geneva, aged seven. It made an indelible impression... This is a period piece, but what a performance! When it comes to Mahler, Solti just has it. This is the beginning of his first cycle of Mahler symphonies. To me this is what Mahler is supposed to be like, never mind the tape hiss and slightly congested crescendos. Just lose yourself. If your system is up to it, by the time you are 30 seconds in (and it's a gentle start), you're adjusted and transported, and from then on, it's just magic. PB
"Solti manages it magnificently, and the LSO respond superbly, It is a recorded performance that goes to the very heart of the music, a recording still unsurpassed three-and-a-half decades later - and probably unsurpassable". Ivan March, Gramophone Magazine
Exotic Dances from the Opera
Eiji Oue / Minnesota
Reference Recordings RR-71CD (1996)
http://www.referencerecordings.com/
Favorites and rarities, including Saint-Saëns: Bacchanale, Strauss: Dance of the Seven Veils, and Rabaud: Dances from Marouf.
Prof Johnson must have been having a good day... Just play track 1: Rimski Korsakoff: Dance of the Tumblers. - with the volume set to "front row - realistic". If your woofers are still going when the last bass drum fades away... you'll have had about as spirited a 3 minutes 47 seconds as it's possible to have. And there's still seven more tracks to go. Really good rich dynamic sound, fantastic sense of space and scale. PB
