Search - Gregor Piatigorsky, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frederic Chopin :: Great Musicians in Copenhagen

HISTORICAL INTEREST

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 11/11/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a collection of snippets from the archives of Danish Radio. The recordings were made in 1933/4, apparently without proper authority, and the booklet provides information on the recording technology used. The sound-quality does not allow a rating of more than 3 stars, but the performers are all pretty top-drawer and so far as I can tell the performances all seem good. In the various concerto movements Piatigorsky Horowitz and Serkin give more relaxed performances in association with Malko and Fritz Busch than in their better-known recordings of the same pieces with Munch and Toscanini. I suspect that if the recorded sound had let me hear more detail I might well have preferred this romantic reading of the the first movement of the Dvorak concerto to the tighter one I know (and like) by Piatigorsky with Munch. In the finale of the Tchaikovsky B flat minor Horowitz is partnered by Malko, and in the first movement of Beethoven 4 Serkin is partnered by Fritz Busch. I am used to listening to them with Toscanini conducting, and I must say I miss him here. However that's just my temperament and there's nothing I want to criticise in the performances on this disc. The one real distinguishing item on the disc is Serkin playing two Chopin studies from op 25 -- the first one in A flat and the B minor in double octaves. They are absolutely superb, and the sound-quality is perhaps the best of the collection, though you may wish (or not) to know that there is one wrong note per study. I had heard tantalising accounts of Serkin's Chopin-playing and these were the only examples of it known to me before the issue of the new biography of him in 2003, which has a superlative live set of the op 25 studies (with no wrong notes whatsoever so far as I recall), and they were what interested me enough to buy this disc at the time I did.



For completeness, the other items not mentioned above are Dvorak's Carnival overture conducted by Fritz Busch, the second movement of Poulenc's Concert Champetre played by Landowska with Malko conducting, two Paganini caprices from Milstein and Debussy's Serenade for the Doll from Horowitz."