Search - Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev :: Symphony 2 / Piano Cto 3

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Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 07/06/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"August 13, 1946 Leopold Stokowski has decided to record the lovable Rachmaninov `s second symphony with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. But that evening perhaps just a few will take into account they will inscribe their names with golden letters in the set of winner versions around this enigmatic work.



To my taste, and despite the countless performances you may get available in the market, there have just been five incandescent recordings, and certainly this one of them. (The other four, to my view are Walter Weller and the London Symphony, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia, Termirkanov and the Royal Philharmonic (perhaps the most pyramidalof this impressive set) and finally, a fabulous performance of Kurt Sanderling in the middle fifties



All of us who followed the sumptuous, idiosyncratic and refined style of this famed director, suspected he would just make another routinary reading, but the result was literally astonishing.



Stokowski made to crop out all his Russian vein and captured the essential core of this work; the initial bars are a heartfelt homage to Tchaikovsky (Sixth Symphony), and since this brief motive he carefully displays and draws the soul of the work, without sentimentality, but with enraptured noblesse and kaleidoscopic reminiscences of a bygone times, superbly depicted and cautiously suggested; so without appeal to melodramatic postures he extracts the lyrical sap of the work. When you listen the Adagio you will understand the motive that conveyed me to make this review, my kind reader; loaded of that sublime atmosphere of sensuality, nostalgia and febrile reminiscences, without a simple bit of sentimentalism, but sentiment. The fourth movement of visible festive character works out as a personal tribute of the composer to one of his most relevant teachers: Nikolai Rimski Korsakov where we may remind far echoes from Scherezade.



The way the master director makes the change of modulation in the transition between the initial theme of Caucasian inspiration and the second lyrical theme is simply extraordinary; the whole Orchestra played with such brightness and elegance that one would be forced to think they were mesmerized before such conviction and penetrating enthusiasm.



Prokoviev' s Third Piano Concerto has as soloist to William Kapell, and the result was a high tension, dynamic and incisive version, with an excessive display of vibrating passionate and mercurial fingering in the final code of the first movement. This live recording is dated from February 20 1949, when Willie (the Prometheus of the piano) counted with just 27 years old. .



In sum this CD is a true historical document. Kudos for Music & arts for this invaluable treasure.









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