Busoni - Piano Concerto, Op. 39 2018

Busoni - Piano Concerto, Op. 39

Жанр: Classical piano concerto
Страна-производитель диска: Made in EU
Год издания диска: 2018
Издатель (лейбл): First Hand Records
Номер по каталогу: FHR64
Дата записи: 1966
Аудиокодек: FLAC
Тип рипа: image+.cue
Битрейт аудио: (lossy + lossless)
Продолжительность: 69:56 / 01:09:56
Источник: релизер
-источник/ник/другое: basso profundo, подарок; Caterina Sforza - работа с cue, доп. сканы
: да, полный web буклет jpeg, 12 страниц + web pdf буклет
Треклист:

1. I. Prologo e Introito: Allegro, dolce e solenne

2. II. Pezzo giocoso: Vivacemente, ma senza fretta

3. IIIa. Pezzo serioso: Introductio: Andante sostenuto, pensoso -

4. IIIb. Prima Pars: Andante, quasi adagio -

5. IIIc. Altera Pars: Sommessamente -

6. IIId. Ultima Pars: a tempo

7. IV. All’Italiana (Tarantella): Vivace; In un tempo

8. V. Cantico: Largamente (with chorus)

Исполнители

Ferrucio Busoni (1866-1924)
Concerto for Piano, Orchestra and Male Chorus, Op. 39 Pietro Scarpini (piano)
[u]Bavarian Radio Choir[/u]
Wolfgang Schubert (chorus-master)
[u]Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra[/u]
Rafael Kubelik (conductor)
First commercial release
Live broadcast recording (with applause excluded from the edited stereo source master) from the Herkulessaal der Residenz, Munich, Germany, 25 November 1966
Officially released in UK/Europe/USA: 7 September 2018
Produced by Gerhard Uebele and Leonhard Nitsch
Engineered by Gisela Bruckmayer
Remastered by David Murphy (FHR) and Giampaolo Zeccara

24bit, 48kHz hi-resolution transfers and remastering

Reviews

The massive piano concerto by Busoni with closing men’s chorus is the culminating work of his first period and sums up what he learned from the piano masters of the past, without venturing far down the more exploratory paths of his later work. It has never been widely performed, but has of late been surprisingly often recorded. Its reputation as the most demanding of concertos, requiring more technique and stamina even than the Brahms second and Rachmaninov third concertos, has led its being treated by those pianists who can tackle it as somewhat of a mountain to be scaled.
The Italian pianist Pietro Scarpini (1911-1997) enjoyed a successful career between the 1940s and the late 1960s, when he retired, as a thinking man’s virtuoso, who played, as well as the standard piano classics, a good deal of then contemporary music including Schoenberg, Petrassi and Dallapiccola. He did not make commercial recordings but apparently made private tapes of his concerts. This recording is of a performance from 1966, using the Bavarian Radio recording, and has had legendary status for some years. This is its first commercial issue. It is the brain child of the Rome-based musicologist and museum curator Antonio Latanza, who considered it ‘the perfect version’ and pressed for its release. It has been remastered by David Murphy and Giampaolo Zeccara and I should say straightaway that the sound quality is fine, and no allowances have to be made for the age of the recording. Only in the final chorus did I find a little congestion in the sound.
It has been worth the trouble. In the opening Prologo e intrada you immediately sense Kubelik’s firm grip on the orchestral line, in an idiom close to Brahms but with that equivocation between major and minor so characteristic of Busoni. When the piano enters, in a part so massive that it has to be notated on four staves, Scarpino nevertheless shapes the pounding chords up and down the piano, and his piano runs and decorative passages are absolutely smooth and apparently effortless.
The following Pezzo giocoso, a scherzo, as in Brahms’s second concerto, is alternately capricious and relentless. The long Pezzo serioso, in effect the slow movement, is in four sections, and gives plenty of scope both for Scarpino’s lyrical playing and for Kubelik’s shaping of the orchestral lines. The fourth movement is headed All’Italiano and is a tarantella; it is rumbustious and at times quite noisy. It also features an enormous cadenza. You might have expected this to be the finale, but then, after a transition, we have a male chorus enter with a solemn setting of a hymn to Allah by the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschlaeger, from his play Aladdin, in the author’s own German translation. In this movement the piano plays mainly when the chorus is silent. The effect is rather like that of the end of Liszt’s Faust symphony, when a male chorus enters with the closing chorus of Goethe’s Faust. You might also think of the finale of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia.
What makes this such a good performance is not just the considerable talents of Scarpino and Kubelik but the fact that they so clearly work together, have a shared and coherent conception of the work, and are able to realize it. As a performance it seems to me equal to my benchmark, Garrick Ohlsson with Christoph von Dohnanyi, and superior to Marc-André Hamelin with Mark Elder. It is a limited edition so collectors should not hesitate.
Stephen Barber

Notes and Editorial Reviews

The pianist Pietro Scarpini (1911-1997) is not generally known outside of his native Italy, yet has a devoted following in some circles. Although he only made one solo commercial recording (an early 1950s release containing works by Bartók and Stravinsky), he methodically preserved tapes of his broadcast, concert, and private home concerts. Arbiter issued a fascinating all-Beethoven Scarpini CD many years back, while certain broadcasts have floated around the proverbial “underground”, such as this 1966 live studio recording of Busoni’s mammoth Piano Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under its long-time music director Rafael Kubelik.
The 70-minute work’s five movements are not easy to bring off, in that they alternate between being vague, inspired, concise, sprawling, browbeating, and tender. However, Scarpini and Kubelik turn in an extraordinary performance full of passionate conviction and vivid detail, helped by well-balanced stereo engineering. In the first movement, Scarpini fervently throws himself into his big opening solo, and is not afraid to sublimate his long chains of scales when the throbbing strings carry the themes. While the second movement’s basic dactylic motto rhythm moves at a heavier gait than in, say, the Hamelin, Donohoe, and Ohlsson recordings, its gruffer, grittier aura imparts extra spice to Busoni’s idiosyncratic harmonic invention.
The long central Pezzo serioso stands out for Kubelik’s brooding yet taut orchestral framework, and for how Scarpini’s lyrical eloquence and boundless coloristic resources never spill over into sentimentality or bombast. The Tarantella may not be a whirling dervish of a Vivace, yet again, the slower tempo allows the beautifully aligned rapid exchanges between orchestral strands to bloom. Even those roof-tearing central climaxes (abetted by the brawniest brass section since Maynard Ferguson’s heyday) retain textural clarity, in contrast to the more diffuse orchestral image in recent recordings (sound samples). Listen, too, for the sense of bottom, tonal heft and vibrancy that the orchestra conveys in the Finale’s opening pages, plus the comparably sonorous and ideally balanced men’s chorus. In short, an historic release that lives up to its legend and more.
- ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

Press Quotes

“Historical Gems: Pietro Scarpini’s Legendary Busoni Concerto, Finally On CD - In short, an historic release that lives up to its legend and more. “ (Classics Today, Jed Distler | Artistic Quality: 10 | Sound Quality: 8)
“A slumbering giant roars back to life” - “In all, this recordings gets closer to poetic heart of this strange work than any other” (The Telegraph)
“What makes this such a good performance is not just the considerable talents of Scarpini and Kubelik but the fact that they so clearly work together, have a shared and coherent conception of the work, and are able to realize it. As a performance it seems to me equal to my benchmark, Garrick Ohlsson with Christoph von Dohnanyi, and superior to Marc-André Hamelin with Mark Elder. It is a limited edition so collectors should not hesita