pi-con-comm

Letters and commentaries on piano concerto recordings we’ve played.

Tchaikovsky / Piano Concerto No. 1 – Our First Shootout Winner – 2008

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

This fairly quiet Large Tulips early DG pressing in the heavy cardboard outer sleeve has THE BEST SOUND we have ever heard for this recording! Believe me, they don’t all sound like this! This copy is airy and sweet; just listen to the flutes — you can really hear the air moving through them. There is still some congestion in the loudest passages, but that’s unfortunately not something we can do anything about. Since it’s on every copy we’ve ever played we just have to assume it’s part of the recording.

Of the twenty or so clean copies we’ve auditioned over the last year or two, this one is clearly in a league of its own, with a price to match.

THE Tchaikovsky First

Since this is the best performance of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto of all time, the minor shortcomings in the sound are easy to overlook. The piano sounds solid and full bodied. I don’t know of another performance of this work that gets the sound of the piano better. You can really hear the percussive quality of the instrument. It’s amazing how many piano recordings have poorly mic’ed pianos. They’re either too distant, lack proper reproduction of the lower registers, or somehow smear the pounding of the keys into a blurry mess. The piano sound is what first impressed me when a friend of mine brought the record over for me to hear. Of course I bought it on the spot.

And the texture of the strings is out of this world — you won’t find a DG that gets with better string tone, and 99% of them are worse. This record does not sound like your typical DG: hard, shrill, and sour. DG made good records in the ’50s and ’60s and then proceeded to fall apart, like most labels did. This is one of their finest recordings. It proves that at one time they knew what they were doing.

This recording really only has one shortcoming, which is that in some sections, when it gets loud, it tends to be a bit congested. Other places are very dynamic. I’m guessing somebody dialed in too much compression in those spots, but who’s to say?

[Not sure we would agree with that in 2024. The best copies are not congested when cleaned and played back properly.]

(more…)

Rachmaninov / Piano Concerto No. 2 – Speakers Corner Reviewed

More of the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Sonic Grade: Unknown

In the late ’90s, we described the sound of this pressing this way:

“Outstanding Rachmaninoff, dark and rich. Highly recommended.”

Since we have not played a copy of the album in over ten years [now 20], we have taken down our previous Sonic Grade of B as we have no idea how the record would fare today on our much-improved system.

For all we know it may have been recut, which is another problem with our older reviews of records we used to like: the new version could have very different sound from the one we played (and that’s not even taking into account the pressing variability, which we all know is sometimes huge).

Brahms / Piano Concerto No. 2 – Cisco Reviewed

More of the Music of Johannes Brahms

A Heavy Vinyl pressing from Cisco / Impex.

It’s been quite a while since I played the Cisco pressing, but I remember it as being quite good.

At the time we wrote:

The overall sound is smooth and spacious. The piano may lack the full weight of the live instrument, but that’s RCA’s fault, not Cisco’s. If you can look past that you will find this to be one of the better Living Stereo reissues available today.

We’ll just have to go with that for now, since we haven’t played the record in more than ten years.

(more…)

Liszt / Piano Concertos – An Early Outlier

More of the music of Franz Liszt (1811-1880)

More Top Quality Classical Piano Recordings

This Beyond White Hot Stamper 2-pack has sound that must be experienced to be believed! The finest Liszt 1st & 2nd Concertos we know of for performance and unquestionably for sound when they sound like this. More like LIVE MUSIC than any classical recording I have played in longer than I care to remember – both sides are so big, rich and transparent we guarantee you have never heard a better piano concerto.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled Outliers & Out-of-This-World Sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

Richter and Kondrashin deliver the finest Liszt 1st & 2nd Piano Concertos I know of, musically, sonically and in every other way. Richter’s performance here is alternately energetic and lyrical, precisely as the work demands. The recording itself is explosively dynamic. The brass is unbelievably full, rich and powerful. You won’t find a better recording of this music anywhere, and on side two this pressing just cannot be beat. It’s BEYOND White Hot (A++++). There was simply no other copy on any side that was close to it. 

Both Sides Now

Big and rich (always a problem with piano recordings: you want to hear the percussive qualities of the instrument, but few copies can pull it off without sounding thin). We love the BIG, FAT, Tubey Magical sound of this recording! The piano is HUGE and powerful — like a real piano.

Huge hall, weight and energy, this is DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND by any standard.

(more…)