Search - Beethoven, Kempff, Szeryng :: Beethoven: Piano Trios Op. 70 & 97 [Australia]

Great recording

J. Grant | North Carolina, USA | 02/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm not always impressed by "all-star" ensemble chamber recordings, but this is definately an exception. Kempff, Szeryng & Fournier play with all the coordination necessary to provide exquisite readings of Beethoven's under-rated piano trios. It's too bad their complete cycle is out of print, so I make due with the Beaux Arts Trio (also wonderful) and the Istomin/Stern/Rose Trio. But if you can get your hands on the complete cycle by the 3 artists on this recording, by all means do so (I saw a used copy for around $200, which I refused to pay, but you may feel otherwise). If not, this disc is a wonderful sample of 3 first rate artists performing 2 of the best chamber works ever written."

A legendary set to collect!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 09/03/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Just to think in Wilhelm Kempff at the piano, with his unsurpassable cantabile line, Henryk Szerying' s notable expressiveness and unique tune, and the refined phrasing of Pierre Fournier, should be a proof of unerring and faultless musicality and the most genuine musicality, so hard to find in these times, where there are soloists of blazing technique and articulated phrasing, but we must accept the era of the great trios is actually placing across an unsaid crisis, because by unknown reasons don' t endure the demanded time to grow up together. Although this statement is far to be applied for the rest of combinations of chamber ensembles. The String Quartets genre is perhaps the most solid and promising among the diverse possibilities but, where are actually the distinguished musical inheritors of famed ensembles of the past as the Bush Quartet, the Végh ensemble, Budapest String Quartet, Vienna Konzerthaus, Karl Haas, Collegium Aureum, Zagreb Solooists or the duos of Cortot- Thibaud, Bachaus - Fournier, Richter - Rostropovich, Casadesus- Francescati or Serkin- Casals or Heifetz-Rubinstein? This visible lack of historical chamber ensembles has affected in sum grade a broad segment of the music because this blending allows to grow up and establish several communication lines as well as to affiance not only friendship ties, but permit establish a continuous exchanging of points of view and visible process of enhancement around each component. .



The distinctive and fortunate conjunction of these three notable and phenomenal soloists made possible for all of us to enjoy the most remarkable set of these piano trios.



I would just like to advise you about the definitive versions of the phantom Op. 70 and the Archduke Op. 97 are to my mind the famous recordings made by Pablo Casals, Karl Engel and Sándor Végh with the Op. 70 and Horszowski and Végh recorded in Prades 7/1061 and Bonn 9/ 1958 respectively in an anthological album label Philips: please take note: 420-855-2.



If you may get this last album and this set you really should not worry about any other previous or late set. These are definitive recordings, that belong to another level of conception and status.



My persoanl advise is for you to get the whole set of piano trios (they seem to be unavailbale at least in Amazon), due they configure an invaluable set of treasures of fundamental relevance. A true universal patrimony.

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