Michael Ponti - Michael Ponti Plays Rubinstein, Alkan & Thalberg (2019)
WEB FLAC (tracks) - 243 MB | Tracks: 7 | 60:07 min
Style: Classical | Label: Doron Music
Virtuoso pianist Michael Ponti (b. 1937), winner of the 1964 Busoni Competition, came to my attention in Atlanta, Georgia, when he performed the Bartok Second Concerto, the same work with which he had made his Vienna debut with Wolfgang Sawallisch. When we met backstage, I staked Ponti to a well-earned cup of coffee. These reissues of relatively rare concert repertory have been licensed from Vox Records, which recorded these works 1968-1979. Ponti made a career – prior to his debilitating stroke that has since rendered useless his right arm – of performing the most fiendishly difficult and often occult concert works, including all of Scriabin and much of the virtuoso Romantic repertory usually consigned to the wayside of the mainstream.