Classical Music for Aficionados

jim204

Rubinstein was also a marvellous pianist in the mazurkas.....

But unknown to many the great Yakov Flier, the russian professor of many great late pianits, gives to us one of the best version of the mazurkas but totally different than Barbosa....The amazing fluidity and interprenetrating rythms of Barbosa with a perfect easiness and poetic delicate fluency is replaced by a more romantic and forceful expressiveness and mostly an amazing recreation of the dance itself (a waltz with a hicup said someone but i forgot whom) by Yakov Flier.... One of the very great russian pianists... Rubinstein is romantic like Flier and easily fluent like Barbosa but less surprizing than Flier in the dance figure recreation itself....And i like the more detached interpretation of Barbosa more than the interpretation from  many other very good pianists....

Then Barbosa and Flier are my 2 favorites for these pieces because they are so opposite and complementary to each other and so perfect anyway in their own rendition of these dances which were the best of Chopin for me and the most precious works for the composer himself....

Orfeo d’ Or reissues historical recordings. My favorites are from the Salzburg Festival. The Clara Haskil remaster is in mono but it’s so amazingly beautiful. Also, many years ago their existed the Andante label and their vintage recording remasters are exquisite. It’s very apparent that performance practices have changed since the early 20th century and it can be enlightening to hear people like Wilhelm Backhaus or a young Vladimir Horowitz.

Just listened to Schumann: Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 by Sviatoslav Richter. Melodia release, available on Tidal. It is astounding. Is there another notable recording of this ? 

ei001h,
I’d recommend looking at the apr label, here’s a Richter recording,

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=221050

Here’s a list of recordings with Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes for Piano, some are listed as recommended;

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/albumList.jsp?name_id1=10915&name_role1=1&comp_id=2717&a...

@goofyfoot found it on Tidal, listening to it now. Thanks