Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3

Byron Janis' celebrated recordings of these two concertos have never sounded better than in this new remastering by Mercury's Wilma Cozart Fine. Talk about recordings usually focuses on the artists and composers, and rightly so, but there are some people in the industry whose names you should know, producers and engineers whose work is as artistically excellent as the performers they record. During the late 50s and early 60s the Fines, husband and wife, created a catalog of recordings, which, when all is said and done, is probably title for title the finest in existence. There isn't a single one that isn't worth hearing, and some, like this one, belong in every collection. --David Hurwitz Listen to Samples.

Piano Concerto No.2 In C Minor, Op.18

Serge Rachmaninoff (1873 – 1943)

Moderato
Adagio sostenuto
Allegro scherzando

The year of the Piano Concerto No.2 was 1900, and its first performance took place on October 14, 1901 with the Moscow Philharmonic. The composer played the piano part in this premier performance. Few of Rachmaninoff’s works are so richly filled with intoxicating melodic ideas; few seem to have arisen in such a soaring flight of inspiration. From the majestic opening of the first movement with its succession of chords pronounced by the solo piano in increasing sonority from pianissimo to fortissimo, through the eloquent melody for oboes and violas in the third movement (one of the most stirring lyric pages in modern concerto literature), the concerto teems with exciting, moving, passionate, tender ideas, pouring forth inexhaustibly. The second movement, Adagio sostenuto, is a particularly poetic page, somewhat sentimental, somewhat nostalgic, but always deeply felt and sensitively expressed.

Rachmaninoff dedicated the concerto to Dr.Dahl whose treatment of Rachmaninoff’s state of despair and morbidity following the failure of his First Symphony and First Piano Concerto enable the composer to compose again with new vitality and freshness. The result was his Piano Concerto No.2, in many respects the best loved of all his larger works, and one of the most inspired. When his vein of melody was tapped, it gushed in a warm stream of that Russian lyricism which can turn the stone heart to water. Rachmaninoff never sought to expound doctrines other than the doctrine of beauty, and that is why his music is always “singing”. He was a composer with soul in his music – emotional, hypersensitive, moody, at alternate moments brooding.

Bartok The Miraculous Mandarin

This Bartok album from conductor Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra is a real treat. It brings wonderful performances of Bartok not often recorded...even Boulez hasn't recorded some of these pieces in his Bartok survery.
In addition to the colorfully, zesty performances of these rare Bartok gems, this dics has (to my mind) the best performance of the Complete Mircaculous Mandarin Ballet out on CD. The orchestra and conduct go for color and refinement rather than sheer power. The opening bristles with excitement, and the chase shows the orchestra in fine form at a tempo that is daringly fast. In this case it works. It is clear that conductor and orchestra are very much home in these works of Bartok. For a complete Mandarin I would say that this is now first choice...even over the excellant Boulez version for DG. The playing in this ballet is some of the best I've heard (only the Berlin Philharmonic in their recording of the suite...not complete ballet...plays better).
Perhaps until the BPO makes a complete recording with Abbado or Rattle...this is the Mandarin to get I would say.
Strong recommendation.--Greg Hales See more.

Rumanian Folk Dances For String Orchestra

Béla Bartók (1881 – 1945)

Béla Bartók’s interest in and preoccupation with Hungarian folk music considerably influenced his own style as a composer. The real Hungarian music, which he discovered, is quite other than the meretricious gypsy music exploited by Brahms and Liszt: its melodies, built on modes, are harsher and severer in line; its spirit is more virile; it’s feeling more barbaric. And Bartók’s model for his own works, up to the time he settled in the United States, was this Hungarian folk music. At first hearing this music is usually not pleasant to listen to, for it is disjointed, discordant, and seemingly amorphous. Bartók was intensely modern in his use (or lack of use) of tonality and in his harmonic vocabulary. His music was the product of a complex intelligence, demanding familiarity before it could be understood and appreciated. However, in his last works written, humanity and emotion are added elements-qualities which explain why these compositions are heard more frequently and appreciated more widely than the earlier works of his early manhood and maturity.