Search - Aram Khachaturian, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Liss :: Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1; Khachaturian: Piano Concerto

BOSS!

DAVIDNYC1023 | New York, NY | 07/21/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have to write a review of this recording/performance RIGHT NOW... I've just finished listening to this disc for the millionth time, and it has only been released in the USA for four days...



This performance of the Khachaturian piano concerto gets TEN STARS, easily... This is a piece I've known and loved and lived with for a decade. Some history: the Kapell Edition came out one month after I started my freshman year of college. I didn't eat or drink or sleep or study because of this God-sent Box. Mainly because of the Khachaturian concerto with Koussevitsky. What a find! I soon-thereafter acquired and got to know Kapell's other outstanding recording with Black -- and have since come to love quite a few other performances, particularly those of Katz (with Boult) and Yablonskaya (with Yablonsky)... I feel a bit guilty, honestly, for my affections and the attentions I've given this current recording. Kapell changed my life, made it amazing... But this disc, Berezovsky, I want to cuss, I want to use profanities.... It is aggressive, introspective, savage, pulverising, intense, wild, frantic, berserk, delirious, raging, furious, glorious, monumental. It's everything I knew it could be, and so much more than I ever could've hoped for... Absoltely amazing pianism, and great-great-great performances from the musicians of the virtually unknown Ural Philharmonic Orchestra.



Now - I am going to judge the Tchaikovsky separately. I have to. The sound on the first movement (the first track of the disc) absolutely sucks. Ridiculous. I can't understand what happened, why, how it was allowed to remain. It's as if they were trying to impose a sort of non-blockbuster sound to it, like they pushed some sort of "faux-concerthall" "faux-profound" or "underwater-distortion" button in the production room. The performance(s) (under, within, beyond the sound) - is, however, great... That's just the first movement. The second movement is light and delicious, so wonderful, so lovely. And the third movement - I'm leaning toward obscenities again (in a very good way). Wow, what a third movement. Fantastic. I love how he does it, how he takes all the cheese out of it, how--to these ears which have heard this piece so many thousands of times (I own at least a hundred different recordings of it)--Berezovsky can make these many-many notes come off as if brand new... simply -- marvelous.



So. The absolute best Khachaturian available... And, a terrific Tchaikovsky that just happens to have bad sound in the first movement but pulls it all together and still leaves you overwhelmed(BUT, I must say, my favorite for the Tchaikovsky First piano concerto is still Horowitz/Szell - a knockout) ...



An essential disc."

Dreadful sonics sabotage great performances

Hannibal | Los Angeles, CA USA | 01/16/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It is a sad irony that Khachaturian's colorful scores which cry out for the kind of sound reproduction that modern recording techniques - particularly SACD - could give them to fully demonstrate the vivid panoply of the tuneful and rhythmic display which are their hallmark have once again been denied to them , as in so many previous recordings.



Khachaturian's Piano Concerto is a perfect case in point. Not since the great recording of William Kapell under Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony has there been a performance to equal this one by Boris Berezovsky. BUT THE SOUND!!! It's as bad as the one Kapell made more than a half century earlier. This time the music sounds as though the microphones were covered in mushy mashed potatoes....What a horror, and what an opportunity was lost - for Berezovsky gives the performance of a lifetime, unlikely to ever be equaled much less surpassed. - So fabulous that I urge you to hear it despite the sonic butchery performed on it.

The Tchaikovsky 1st is not quite in the same league. But Berezovsky can play like the devil, and there are many interesting things in his performance, even if it cannot quite compare to the very, very best of many of his colleagues.



But if you love the Khachaturian, snap this up quickly. Despite the horrific sound, the performance will be considered legendary!"