Sony Log 3

Few record labels can boast as glorious a legacy as Sony Classical. This lavish four-disc set chronicles the finest performances available on the label from the past ninety-five years. Eighty selections comprising over four hours of music are accompanied by two lavishly illustrated booklets highlighting Sony Classical's stellar history.

Sony Classical releases Juilliard String Quartet – The Early Columbia Recordings: Sony Classical is excited to present a newly remastered selection in 24bit of the earliest albums of this august American ensemble. Made between 1949 and 1956 in Columbia’s studio on Manhattan’s 30th St., these landmark recordings are mostly new to listeners…

Yefim Bronfman has a special affinity for these two concerti, a nearly selfless approach to the scores that keeps in mind that while the piano may be the solo instrument and provide key lines for the 'accompanying' orchestra to elucidate, the same relationship belongs to the orchestra when Rachmaninov introduced melodies in the orchestration that are then embraced with ardor by the piano soloist.

It was the heroic age, the postwar age when American pianists first made their mark in the great wide world. The heroes took many forms: the apollonian Van Cliburn, the dionysic Byron Janis, and the mercurial Gary Graffman, along with many, many others. The most intellectually brilliant and technically incendiary member of the pantheon was Leon Fleisher. While other heroes rode the Russian war horses of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov to fame and glory, Fleisher stuck with Beethoven and Brahms, the Alpha and Omega of German composers for the piano. In these Columbia recordings of Beethoven's Third and Fourth piano concertos from the 1959 and 1961, Fleisher teamed with George Szell, the sternest of living conductors, leading the Cleveland Orchestra, the most virtuosic of American orchestras, and the results are transcendent.

I have many versions of this great concerto. My first ever exposure to this work was a recording by Witold Malcuzynski that I have now acquired on CD. Since the 1960s I have collected recordings by many great pianists including Bronfman, Glemser, Ashkenazy, Janis, Gilels, Vasary, Horowitz, Lympany, Gieseking, Helfgott, de Larrocha, Rachmaninoff, Wild, Kapell, Bolet, Argerich, Malcuzynski - and just when I thought I'd heard all the Rach 3 had to say, along comes this sublime recording by the late great Lazar Berman. The playing is clear, romantic, musically intelligent, exciting and enjoyable and satisfying in every way.