Search - F. Chopin :: Klavierwerke

Golden Age of Chopin

King Lemuel | Puyallup, WA | 01/11/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I thought I would review this since I bought it sight unseen with no info except the thimble I got from Ebay and nobody else has chimmed in.



Briefly, this 10 cd box set presents 1/2 cd to 2 cds (Rubinstein has 2 cds of the 10)sampling of the greatest piano artists from the late 20s to late 40s. Mostly from 1928 to the mid 30s. Because it presents a "best of" it probably does not cover the entire musical corpus of Chopin. Instead, there are several renditions of the piano concertos, ballads, etc. Probably each artist represented had at least a dozen to several dozen lp size recordings put out during this time frame (though they would have been on 78s or something even worse, whatever they had before 78s!).



To really enjoy these cds and put faces on the artists and their life and times, I recommend watching the DVD "The Golden Age of the Piano." I viewed this DVD today thanks to Netflix and many of the artists on the cds are on the DVD or refered to in the DVD. Each of these pianists had famous teachers, many of whom have a direct lineage back to Beethoven, Chopin, etc.



Obviously, the recording technology has progressed a long way since the late 1920s so do not expect Harnoncourt crystal clear DDD sound. I would compare the sound quality favorably to the top 10 pop/rock music I listened to back in the 60s on AM radio before FM album rock got cranked up. Some of the discs shine better than others sound wise. The one hurting the most (especially track one) is cd 7 Wilhelm Backhaus where he covers all 24 op 10 and op 25 etudes. It sounds like they recorded directly to a disc and the disc is somewhat crakly. I am half way tempted to run that track thru my audio cleaning software and remove the crackles but then I would be missing the listening experience of what they had way back when.



It is too bad we cannot hear Rubinstein or Horowitz from their hey days back in the 20s and thirties on Niklaus Harnoncourt DDD crstal clear audio! (I recently was wowed by the sound from his early Mozart symphonies and his 5 or 6 cds in the Mozart 250th symphony box set). Some of the experts like Rubinstein's Chopin from those days better than his RCA white dog label recordings from the 50s to mid 60s. But we should make do with what is available and be thankful to have it. These discs are still very enjoyable to listen to and the dudes on the discs do not screw up Chopin! If you are a fan of Tomas Vasary or Askenazy, etc. you will have some great historical pianist figures to compare them to.

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