Chopin Piano Concertos

Composed in 1882/3, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Piano Concerto was the last of a series of works written in the very happy middle period of his life; other compositions of this period, rich in charming lyricism, included the opera The Snow Maiden and the orchestral Szakza (‘Fairy Tale’). The Concerto was first performed in March 1884 at one of Balakirev’s Free School concerts in St Petersburg and was the last work of Rimsky to be wholly approved of by his erstwhile mentor. While the lyricism is still sincere and deeply felt in the Concerto, the work also foreshadows the master artificer of the later years.

Mozart - Piano Concertos K 503 & K 466 - Martha Argerich, Claudio Abbado, Orchestra Mozart (2014) {Deutsche Grammophon}
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© 2014 Deutsche Grammophon | 00289 479 1033
Classical / Viennese School / Concerto / Piano

The first new release for ten years from Martha Argerich and Claudio Abbado is their first ever album of concertos by Mozart. The legendary pianist and conductor add the sublime music of Mozart to their unrivaled, multi award-winning DG discography of concertos by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Ravel, Prokofiev, Beethoven and Liszt. Both concertos were recorded with Claudio Abbado s Orchestra Mozart, at concert performances at the 2013 Lucerne Festival that had critics searching for new superlatives. The album contrasts two very different works. Written in D minor, the key of the Queen Of the Night and the opening of Mozart s Requiem, the darkly dramatic No.20, K.466 has a stormy, operatic temperament that looks forward eighteen months to the premiere of Don Giovanni. With its majestic and radiant opening and a march famously reminiscent of the Marseillaise, No.25 in C major, K.503 is the culmination of the twelve transcendent concertos Mozart wrote in Vienna between 1784 and 1786. This release is Martha Argerich s first recording of solo concertos by Mozart on Deutsche Grammophon.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 21
Christian Zacharias, piano / Sinfonie-Orchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks / David Zinman
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Label/Cat#: EMI # 7243 5 74676 2 9 | Country/Year: Germany 2001, 1989/1992
Genre: Classical | Style: Viennese School

…Zacharias began recording for EMI the following year, and would, by 1997, make over 40 albums for the label, covering a broad range of repertory, including Mozart (complete concertos and sonatas), Beethoven (complete concertos), Scarlatti, Schubert, Schumann, and many others. Despite great success throughout the 1980s and early '90s in his keyboard career, Zacharias decided to take up conducting in 1992. His debut was in Geneva with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande…

Bartok - Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 - Pollini, CSO, Abbado (1979) {Deutsche Grammophon 415 371-2}
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© 1979 Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon | 415 371-2
Classical / Concertos

Bartók's Piano Concertos are among the most difficult ever written; only a piano virtuoso of amazing dexterity, along with a virtuoso orchestra, can play them. Maurizio Pollini is that pianist, and the Chicago Symphony is that orchestra. The pianist's command of the music is consistently impressive, and Claudio Abbado leads the orchestra in extremely close sympathy with the pianist. The result is a set of performances that would be ideal except for two factors. One is that this LP reissue contains only two Concertos, when all three can fit on one CD. The other is that the recording balance so undervalues the orchestra that you can't hear everything. I'd love to hear these artists rerecord the same music with better engineering. –Leslie Gerber

Here's the kind of big-name, big-budget Mozart concerto recording that's not as common as it used to be. And lo, even one of the giants of contemporary pianism shows signs of having encountered the leaner approach of historical performances, and even of having absorbed them. Maurizio Pollini, best known for Chopin and the other lyric Romantics, conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra from the keyboard.

Very much an artist of the twenty-first century, Ukranian-born Lisitsa secured a vast global audience purely through social media. She quickly became one of the most viewed pianists on YouTube with over fifty million million visitors to her videos. Lisitsa has recorded all four Rachmaninov piano concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody with the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Francis.

That Martha Argerich is a powerhouse with heart is not a problem, it's a delight; that she can occasionally be rambunctious and a bit careless, on the other hand, can be a problem. On this recording, happily, the pluses are very much in evidence and the minuses nonexistent. She plays the Tchaikovsky with absolute abandon joined with a technical assuredness that is thrilling, and the fact that she gets through it almost error-free makes the breakneck experience all the more rewarding. The Schumann Concerto is hardly in the same league as the Tchaikovsky, but Argerich makes a superb case for it.