Richter Russian

Rarely do we come across as intimate and wide-angled a set as this collection of Dmitri Shostakovich's 15 string quartets, all of them played by the Russian Borodin Quartet. Recorded in Moscow between 1978 and 1983, the quartets are excellently reproduced in digital sound by Sviatoslav Richter, who maintains just enough shadow from the old Melodiya vinyl's audio vérité to make the music breathe passionately. Of course, it's the Borodins who really amp up the musical breath, whether in their near-giddy reading of the third quartet's first movement or in the 14th's complex, stoutly metaphysical somberness. These recordings will likely always remain the standard for Shostakovich's chamber repertoire because the Borodins were so focused on the Russian quartet literature and so little of anything they played by one composer approached the immediate, mature fullness of Shostakovich's quartets from the first to the last. And they played the music with unflagging intensity. Over the six CDs, it's a fascinating exercise to hear the development of compositional elements between the first (1935) and 15th (1974, the year before his death) quartets. Variations on the passacaglia technique, for example, permeate the music, allowing telescopic focus on Shostakovich's careful mediation of the dialogue between constancy and change, flying motifs from violin to viola to cello and back even as it appeared little fundamental groundwork had changed. Polyphony, dissonance, and aching resonance find a home in the music, showing Shostakovich's Catholic reach–and surely the impetus for his long-standing troubled relationship with Soviet politics.

Andrew Bartlett (Amazon.com)

Berman’s first teacher was his mother, herself a pupil of Isabella Vengerova, but at an early age he had lessons from Savshinsky of the Leningrad Conservatory. Berman first played in public at the age of four, and at the age of seven he took part in a concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, subsequently being asked to record Mozart’s Fantasy in D minor K. 397, and a composition of his own…

It says much for the Russian pianist Rustem Hayroudinoff that he gives such a command- ing performance of the Dvorák Piano Concerto, always a tricky work to play thanks to unpianistic piano writing. Sviatoslav Richter, after making his classic recording with Carlos Kleiber, pronounced that it was the most difficult concerto he had ever tackled but somehow he made the original, unrevised piano-writing – which he insisted on using – sound totally convincing.

Pilotseye: Quito (2014)

In Episode 14 „Lady’s trip to the closed strip“ PilotsEYE.tv shows the last mission to one of the world’s most difficult airports. For the first time from the flight deck of a rare Lufthansa McDonnell Douglas MD-II.

The first comprehensive Edition of Beethoven's Complete Works! More than 700 works / 87 CDs for an incredible price! Qualitative excellent recordings (DDD) from 1987 - 2007. In a space saving and aesthetic casket. This Edition with a total of 748 works was arranged based on the well-known “Beethoven-Compendium” of Barry Cooper (Thames & Hudson Ltd., London 1991). The combination of this unique Beethoven Edition is definitely the extensive works of Beethoven which has ever exist.

This is an interesting performance of Bach's Italian Concerto and French Overture by the Russian-born German harpsichordist and pianist, Felix Gottlieb, made on the "Lindholm" harpsichord, recorded in 1984 in the USSR

While this collection brings together all the standard tunes Mstislav Rostropovich recorded for EMI Classics, the "Russian" recordings are deservedly the headline grabbers. World premieres abound, from a searing account of Prokofiev's Cello Sonata with Sviatoslav Richter to an especially probing Shostakovich Second Cello Concerto, both given in the presence of the composers.