Mozart Serkin 23

Peter Serkin, whose recorded output is dwarfed by his father's in sheer size but by no means in artistic distinction, is spotlighted in a new release playing Mozart: his complete RCA recordings of the composer. When his set of Piano Concertos Nos. 14-19 was released in 1973, High Fidelity's reviewer wrote: "I have heard no other pianist who seems to follow every pulse of this Mozartean vitality quite as beautifully as Peter Serkin, and the combined efforts of Serkin fils with Alexander Schneider and the English Chamber Orchestra on this RCA set form very simply one of the most important contributions to the Mozart discography." The new box also contains Serkin's distinguished mid-1970s recordings of the Clarinet Quintet and Piano-Wind Quintet K 452 with members of his distinguished ensemble TASHI.

Peter Serkin, whose recorded output is dwarfed by his father's in sheer size but by no means in artistic distinction, is spotlighted in a new release playing Mozart: his complete RCA recordings of the composer. When his set of Piano Concertos Nos. 14-19 was released in 1973, High Fidelity's reviewer wrote: "I have heard no other pianist who seems to follow every pulse of this Mozartean vitality quite as beautifully as Peter Serkin, and the combined efforts of Serkin fils with Alexander Schneider and the English Chamber Orchestra on this RCA set form very simply one of the most important contributions to the Mozart discography." The new box also contains Serkin's distinguished mid-1970s recordings of the Clarinet Quintet and Piano-Wind Quintet K 452 with members of his distinguished ensemble TASHI.

The partnership of Serkin and Abbado in Mozart is a fascinating one. They are such different musical personalities, yet they work remarkably well together, so that each performance becomes an artistic amalgam of two quite different artistic approaches. Abbado matches a natural spontaneous warmth (listen to the beguiling way the orchestra shapes the secondary theme in the first movement of the A major Concerto) with the utmost refinement of detail; whereas Serkin, patrician, authoritative, strong, is more selfconsciously expressive when he deviates from a strictly rhythmic presentation of the melodic line in the same movement.

Here we have all of the solo and concerted stereo Beethoven repertoire featuring Rudolf Serkin released by Sony Classical, gathered together in an 11-disc budget boxed set. It does not include mono Beethoven items that Serkin remade in stereo. However, Serkin's great mono-only Diabelli Variations is present, along with alternative live Marlboro Festival recordings of the Fourth concerto and the Choral Fantasy, plus two stereo versions of the Op. 110 sonata (one from 1971, the other a posthumously released 1960 recording).

This 10 CD set offers 11 live recitals given by 10 famous pianists in Switzerland from 1953 to 1993. Each pianist is credited by a single CD. Only Backhaus CD contains fragments from two different programs (1953 and 1960), all the other pianists are represented by a single program.

Recorded over 13 years between 1975 and 1988, Murray Perahia's cycle of the complete piano concertos of Mozart, including the concert rondos and double concertos, remains perhaps the most enduring monument to his art. What is it about Perahia's art, some skeptics might ask, that is worth enduring? For one thing, as this 12-disc set amply demonstrates, there is his incredible tone.

Today’s personality-cult pianists could, if they chose, learn a tremendous amount from these performances. Clara Haskil’s 1960 Paris recordings of Mozart’s two minor-key piano concertos, Nos. 20 (D minor) and 24 (C minor), have patrician nobility with no scene-stealing heroics. Both performances, incidentally, have been widely circulated, appearing most recently in the “Great Pianists of the 20th Century” series. This leaves concertos 9 and 19, and some shrewdly judged Scarlatti sonatas still out in the cold, but somehow I doubt that this reissue will signal any wider rehabilitation of Haskil’s discographic legacy.

This is the first-ever collection of Rudolf Serkin's complete recordings for Columbia Masterworks on 75 discs: Concertos, sonatas, chamber music and vocal performances, all recorded between 1941 and 1985. An all-embracing survey of Rudolf Serkin's recorded achievements, spanning over 44 years. Some collaborations include Adolf Busch, Pablo Casals, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, Frtiz Reiner, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, and Arturo Toscanini.

Deutsche Grammophon is releasing 16 new e-albums comprising Claudio Abbado’s Complete Recordings on the Yellow Label – the legacy of a legend. Together these digital releases include over 250 hours of first-rate recordings and feature an A-Z of composers. Volume 9 in the series presents a comprehensive set of Abbado’s Mozart interpretations.