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It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Thanks - I was hoping you'd comment

I once saw Kocsis perform the Third Concerto - and in fact, if I remember correctly, his recordings were "assembled" from the in-concert performances he gave at that time with the SF Symphony and De Waart. This was in the 80's in his younger days when I guess he could still be considered a "hunk" - I remember that there was one woman in the second violin section who simply could not take her eyes off of him during the whole performance! ;-)

But as to the actual performance, I feel they (all four concertos) were undermined by that horrible multi-microphoning that Philips was doing at the time. I owned those discs for a while, and my impression was that the live performance sounded WAY better than the CD's did. The recordings did scant justice to the performance as it sounded in the hall. This is a case where we might have a much better impression of Kocsis' playing, if only the engineering had been decent. And in any case, I much prefer his playing to Ashkenazy's in these works - although Ashkenazy receives much better engineering, especially in his earlier Second with Kondrashin and Third with Fistoulari.

Regarding the First Symphony, I'll defer to your opinion about the performances. Although I do like this symphony, I find it not nearly as interesting as the Second and Third symphonies (despite the often fragmentary nature of that latter work), and I don't know it nearly as well as those works (and not nearly as well as you do). I will say however that the reminiscence of the First Movement's main theme at the end of the first of the Symphonic Dances is always a very moving moment for me. BTW, I thought the Amazon comment about the Kocsis performance was interesting.


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  • Thanks - I was hoping you'd comment - Chris from Lafayette 17:57:12 07/11/12 (0)

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