123mortimer

Simply masterful! I am extremely impressed. I had not known of this pianist before. What an enrichment. And how encouraging to see that this piece can be played with such taste and natural musicality, instead of the unbecoming histrionics of a Lang Lang.

Thank you so much for posting this and the other recordings. How extremely interesting! This is a wonderful recording. So singing, taking the music totally seriously, never sentimental. Musicians of this generation still had authentic belcanto in their blood, and you can really hear it.

Superlative singing. Her technique is simply transcendental. Still, the contest is not entirely fair because Nilsson is not going up against two of the strongest contenders for top honors with this aria: Montserrat Caballe and Zinka Milanov.

Rubato is a matter of taste, but basic rhythmic integrity is not. And that's what's lacking here. Wild plays one tempo initially, then at 14 he plays a different and slower one, at 20, he goes back to faster, at 26 to slower. The same thing happens over and over again (for example, 1:17 and 1:2...

This is an absolutely fantastic rendition, and Argerich is one of the greatest pianists evder, but the greatest female pianist ever born is Clara Schumann. More even than Liszt, she was responsible for creating the modern idea of musical interpretation, and she was for decades the most prominent ...

What a contrast! Even knowing Cortot's interpretation, I would never have thought the kind of lyricism that Pachmann brings out could be found in this piece. It's a very strange rendition, but extremely interesting. Argerich's is by far the most brilliant, fiery, and exciting rendition I have eve...

Yes!!! It's like the drugs took his superego away, so the need (or ability) to control the audience with that personal magnetism of his is gone. Here, he does break free, as you put it, and I feel we somehow see deeper into his musical soul than in his "better" performances, where he controls ver...

By the way, what was your interaction with him? Sounds fascinating. And one other thing - do you have recordings of the Liszt Sonata from the 70s? I'd be most interested in hearing those. The 1976 (right?) recording just wasn't as good as it could have been (though i love it, warts and all), and ...

(continued) That's violinist Edwin Bachmann, a former member of Toscanini's orchestra, and neighbor (a few streets down) and old acquaintance of Horowitz, whom I had visited the previous month and who told me that he had had Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz over for tea at his apartment just a few weeks ear...

Thank you so much for putting these things up. This rendition is really beyond belief! I heard this live from him in Carnegie Hall in 1980 (on another post at one of your videos, I think I mistakenly wrote 1981), but this is superior. Simply unbelievable.

You're right. To me, this recording is all about infinite pianistic and creative power. It totally transcends the instrument. It sounds like he's eating the piano alive. Of course, if he weren't as analytically and creatively brilliant as he is pianistically, we wouldn't care so much. But he is, ...

Yes, her bow hold is frightfully perfect. Perlman has gigantic and extremely strong hands. I suspect his bow hold is in part a result of that. But this reliance on small muscles, rather than the large arm and shoulder muscles, limits him more and more as he ages. Milstein's "primitive" bow hold a...

Thank you for posting this. A great interpretation of one of the piano giants of the last 100 years. Lisitsa plays this much faster, as does Ashkenazy. But much gets lost. The nobility and grandeur of Gilels's rendition is unrivalled. I had the honor of hearing Gilels play this piece in the early...

Why do all good musicians live so long? Horszowsky (101), Casals (96), Stokowski (95), Rubinstein (94), Toscanini (90), Milstein (89), Verdi (88), Serkin (88), Klemperer (88), Bohm (87), Horowitz (86), Walter (86) and so on.