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In Reply to: RE: Brahms piano concerto no 2 posted by Brian Cheney on April 29, 2012 at 13:38:48
I love the music.
I also love the Richter.
I'll listen to the Schnabel.
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There's probably an exception or two (Moravec maybe - even then, I'm not so sure). However, despite my subject heading, I'm about to order a slow performance myself (at least from what I can tell from the samples) with Anna Malikova and the Duisburg Philharmonic and Jonathan Darlington on the Acousence label.
Ralf Koschnicke, the engineer and producer for this label, really seems to know what the heck he's doing - the recordings on this label are among the very best from an engineering point of view being released nowadays IMHO.
BTW, to get back to the Schnabel performance, I'm afraid I wasn't impressed. (Sorry, Brian.) Where we should have impetus, we have mere impatience (allied to various technical shortcomings and mishaps). I feel confident in saying that a performance like this would not get past the first round of a major piano competition these days. (Well, that's not actually true, because the concerto performances are usually in the final round! But the point is that Schnabel's technical difficulties are as much conceptual as physical, and his refusal to come to grips with the details of the writing (e.g., finishing the figures and phrases, articulating the grace notes rather than clumping them together, maintaining the pulse in a meaningful way, etc.) results in a performance that all too often sounds slap dash.
performing his own works. Although there were plenty of wrong notes, Schnabel reports Brahms "played in the grand manner" I doubt Brahms the pianist would get by the first round of today's competitions either.
I note with interest that an 18 year old Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli placed 7th in his first competition, the 1938 Ysaye. Winner was Gilels, then 21.
Yes - good points. In Earl Wild's memoirs, he mentions that he worked with a professor who had heard Brahms play, and the verdict was that when Brahms played chamber music, not only did he play a lot of wrong notes, but he would often play so loudly that he drowned out the other instruments!
I can't resist pointing out that Michelangeli and Gilels had quite a bit more finish to their playing than Schnabel did, even though Gilels was a bit wild himself in his youthful playing.
I wonder if he was as much a perfectionist at the age of 18 as he was in his later years.
Can't say - the earliest ABM recordings I've heard are from 1948.
And I'm not saying I prefer a slow rendition, I'm just saying that I like the music so much that I'd take a slow version if that was my only choice.
Brahms has taken a bit of bashing on this forum and I'm just stating I find much of his music exceptional.
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