Mikhail Rudy

Let me begin by saying that this only my third disc of the music of Czech composer Leos Janacek. (The other two being "Piano Works" with Rudolf Firkusny on DG Originals, and "Intimate Letters" with the Juilliard String Quartet.) From the onset I have been impressed by Janacek's compositional style – he seamlessly melds the passion of the great Romantic composers with the musical exploration and freedom of the early 20th Century composers, and in the process develops quite a unique voice.

Sergei Rachmaninov: Symphonies 1-3; Piano Concerto 1-4; Isle of Dead; Symphonic Dances -
Mikhail Rudy, piano; St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra; Mariss Jansons, conductor
Classical | 6 CDs | EAC Rip V0.99 prebeta 4 | 1,54 Gb | FLAC+LOG+M3U No cue | Full scans | 4shared links
Publisher: EMi Classics

David Hurwitz on Symphony No. 3 & Symphonic Dances
One of the great Rachmaninov recordings ever made, these accounts of the Third Symphony and Symphonic Dances by Mariss Jansons and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic recall the heady days of Mravinsky and the (then-named) Leningraders at their finest–only in top-quality sound. The whiplash strings in the second movement of the Symphonic Dances, hair-trigger discipline in the same work's outer movements, and the razor-sharp modernity that Jansons brings to the Third Symphony all combine to make this reissue irresistible. There are too many memorable moments to list here, but the central section of the Third Symphony's slow movement, full of mordant wit, and the rhythmically thrilling ending of the Symphonic Dances come immediately to mind. If you missed this issue the first time, don't let it pass by again. It belongs in every serious record collection. [5/7/2004]

The collection gathers the best relaxing tunes from the piano repertoire performed by most eminent musicians: Piotr Anderszewski, Leif Ove Andsnes, Daniel Barenboim, Bertrand Chamayou, Aldo Ciccolini, Samson François, Hélène Grimaud, Stephen Kovacevich, Nicolai Lugansky, Maria-João Pires, Maurizio Pollini, Anne Queffélec, Alexandre Tharaud and Alexis Weissenberg.

The performance by Mariss Jansons and the London Philharmonic is excellent. Jansons fully exploits some striking moments in the 15th, and generally takes a balanced approach, at different times selecting tempi that are slower or faster than the norm, with high quality orchestral playing. In Jansons’ 15th, his Adagio is particularly successful. Jansons effectively builds to a powerful climax at the end of the long finale.

It's a tall order to compile the best classical music of the twentieth century, but EMI has selected its top 100 classics for this six-disc set, and it's difficult to argue with most of the choices. Without taking sides in the great ideological debates of the modern era – traditionalist vs. avant-garde, tonal vs. atonal, styles vs. schools, and so on – the label has picked the composers whose reputations seem most secure at the turn of the twenty-first century and has chosen representative excerpts of their music. Certainly, the titans of modernism are here, such as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev, Claude Debussy, and Benjamin Britten, to name just a few masters, but they don't cast such a large shadow that they eclipse either their more backward-looking predecessors or their more experimental successors.