Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Weingartner, London Philharmonic Orchestra :: Beethoven: Triple Concerto; Fidelio Overture; Piano Concerto No. 3

Buy it for Long

David Landau | Los Angeles, CA USA | 12/27/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A thoroughly magnificent record. Anything with Weingartner and Vienna is wonderful to have. In the Fidelio overture, Weingartner sounds a lot like Toscanini--or should we rather say Toscanini sounds like Weingartner? In either case, a dynamic, no-nonsense traversal that puts us close to the Beethoven ethos. The Triple Concerto manages to sound urgent as well as relaxed. Try that sometime, James Levine! The high point of the disc is the concerto, recorded with a Parisian orchestra that Weingartner has sounding every bit as up-to-snuff as the Vienna Phil--but really the indispensable partner in this is Marguerite Long, who on the evidence is one of the century's most prodigious pianists--and clearly a match for Weingartner in musical and human terms--no subservient soloist, she!



Years ago, I had the opportunity to speak with the late Ania Dorfmann, the only woman pianist ever to record as a soloist with Toscanini. I asked her whether Toscanini, in their collaborations, had had to have the last word. "Not the last word, my dear," she replied. "The only word." And Dorfmann was a tremendous personality as well as a brilliant pianist. But on the aural evidence, Long was even more staunch, holding her own with Vienna's absolute master. A lioness of the keyboard--by turns ferocious and tender--nothing was beyond her ken.



Buy this disc for the resplendent sound of the prewar Vienna Phil, generously captured in the Opus Kura transfers; buy it for Weingartner's musical authority, his special way with Beethoven; and buy it above all for Long, under whose gigantic aura the whole magnificent thing transpires.



For everyone's information including hopefully Amazon's, I'm writing this review from San Francisco, where I now live. (Smile icon.)Charles Münch - Volume 5 - Debussy: La Mer (recorded 1942) / Delannoy: Serenade Concertante (Henry Merckel, violin) (recorded 1941); La Pantoufle de Vair (1931)(recorded 1941) / Halffter: Rhapsodie Portugaise for Piano and Orchestra (Marguerite Long, pi..."