Search - Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Kapell :: Symphony 2

Treasured recordings!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 10/27/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The CD is simply marvelous . The Second Symphony even it is not the winner version of the market in which Termirkanov wins by far is warm and splendid with this Stokowski emphasis all along the work .

But the crown jewel is the Prokoviev Third Piano Concerto .

In this case we have Kapell in a a more mature stage without the efervescence and hyperkinetic velocity with the Dallas Symphony of 1946 under Dorati conducting .

Kapell plays with more convincinga and sincere warmth and refined elegance stylish specially this First movement giving the work the fierce and wildful tone but besides the essential lyricism and the somber mood present in the score.

Notice for instance the famous cantabile of the First Movement of the Prokoviev Seventh Symphony . There is an obstinato in the strings which literally draw before our sensibility the caucassian atmosphere and the most intimate features of the russian soul .

And back to the Third Piano Concert that gaze is simply fundamental if you are really interested in to state something more than a mere tour de force exercise in which pitifully the most of pianist in the recent times consider the work .

This wrong approach raises from the distorted conception of absorbing the dyonisiac content of the work and transforming it in a anodyne and mechanic routine without nerve and commitment.

Kapell certainly was very far from this point of view and the result was one of the most remarkable recordings ever made of this work .

The next October 29 all of us who still really miss the sideral craft of this aristos and certainly will remember that absurd day in 1953 when that painful , tragic ,awful and no sense accident became him in a living legend . Kapell was just 31 years old in that moment .

And the rest is silence !"