DeepBlue wrote:

PPeso wrote:

Resurrecting a 1977 project by the Desmar label, in 2018 Ward Marston
and Gregor Benko started releasing a series of albums titled "Landmarks

of Recorded Pianism" on the Marston label. The idea was (and is) to
"present orphan recordings of great pianists that didn't fit into plans

for other reissues". So far three volumes in double cd format have
appeared, the most recent one released just a few weeks ago. Far from
"landmarks", these recordings are not likely to appear in any
building-a-library survey of recommended versions, and arguably are not

even up for consideration as second- or third-best historical
alternatives. What they provide, and magnificently so, is the
pianophile

equivalent of an afternoon spent in a dusty attic discovering arcane
curiosities buried in unexplored corners, long abandoned and forgotten.

The usual suspects - the Horowitzs, the Cortots, Rosenthals, Friedmans,

Lipattis - are included in this series with vintage recordings that
scrape the bottom of their discographical barrels. And then there are
the unknown unknowns, the absolute surprises, the minor epiphanies and
juicy revelations galore. Not for the faint of heart I guess (the 1933
Friedman recordings from Tokyo on Vol.2 are especially dreadful
sound-wise), but a commendable project worth sponsoring, depending on
one's disposition and resources.

The first volume included as a minor scoop some never-released Brahms
and Scarlatti private recordings by Lipatti from the mid-1940s, in
decent sound and good for completists even though not exactly
earth-shattering. Also from Vol.1: an extremely rare and mesmerizing
excerpt from the II mvt of Beethoven Op.10 No.3 by Josef Labor, a blind

pianist born in 1842 and much appreciated by Joachim and Hanslick; a
muscular Rachmaninoff PC2 by Leff Pouishnoff with Boult conducting,
from

a 1946 live recording at the Proms; long excerpts from a Tchaikovsky
PC1

with Horowitz and Reiner in 1932, more introspective than the notorious

1940s readings with Toscanini; all followed by more Horowitz whining
and

bitching about car noises, insects and bad acoustics at Carnegie and
Avery Fisher Halls (with Wanda laughing in the background...) and
Guiomar Novaes yelling at her producer while rehearsing Chopin's
Berceuse (not surprisingly this was her last session with Vox Records!)

The highlights of the second volume are some haunting recordings of
Mompou played by Mompou himself, including his arrangement of Chopin's
Waltz Op.34 No.2; two occasionally wild and unhibited readings of
Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 by Rosenthal, recorded live in 1929 and

in studio one year later; and a delightfully spontaneous, flamboyant
and

rhapsodic Tchaikovsky PC1 by Marc Hambourg with Malcom Sargent and the
BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1955.

The third volume opens with a potpourri of themes from the I mvt of
(again!) Tchaikovsky PC1 played by Simon Barere in 1943, a rare
orchestral outing for this pianist; next are two pieces composed and
played in 1919 by the Canadian-American pianist Nathaniel Dett,
followed

by a fine Chopin PC2 with Jan Smeterlin - a student of Godowsky - and
the BSO conducted by Koussevitsky in 1936. But in time-capsule terms
the

true highlight of the album is the Schumann PC leisurely played in 1951

by the British pianist Adelina De Lara, a student of Clara Schumann
from

1896 to 1891, here prefaced by a spoken recollection of her time in
Frankfurt with Frau Doktor Schumann. The rest of the album is devoted
to

several Bach and Handel 1930 selections by Elsie Hall, an Australian
pianist, and two longish chats with few musical extracts by Katharine
Goodson, a student of Leschetizky and a friend of the soprano Nellie
Melba, both mentioned at length in the speeches.

Yawn! There are thousands of far more interesting recordings in the
archives of radio stations all across Europe (Western AND Eastern)
by far better pianists than any of the above mentioned. Far more
"landmark" too.

Yes. Volume 3 is not good. More interested in being woke than being interesting.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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