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5 reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
"Comparisons are odious"
5 Jan 2012
Format:Audio CD
I take this opportunity for some remarks on a really basic issue - namely that reviewing "live" performances on record, and comparing them to studio productions, is radical nonsense.
Studio recordings are made as consumer products and intended for repeated listening as documents of a composer's art and the skills and insights of his performers under stringently controlled and near-private conditions.
Live recordings are memorabilia of unique public occasions, and as such do not fall into the category of general consumer articles. Do they nevertheless serve the general public? No, because they cannot reproduce anything of the concert as an event - none of the aura, ambience, frisson, excitement (or boredom) of the audience, only the cold sound. Such a recording is essentially similar to a black and white photocopy of the Mona Lisa.
As it happens, I was present at the occasion of this recording; and it was profoundly affecting as great live performances by such great artists can be. Naturally I bought the album as a memento. But I cannot for a moment pretend that the sounds coming off the disk resemble much of what I experienced that evening. And if it is almost meaningless to me now, except as a reminder of what I witnessed, how much more senseless to you! If you did not know it was Pollini playing in Dresden, but had to judge this blindfold, you could not discern the inspiration it conveyed to the audience.
Nothing much else to add. From this point you're on your own. But there are two studio recordings from Pollini which both serve your need for fine readings of this concerto.
(The 4 stars are no value judgement, just a helpless indicator that the product is neither good nor bad, but just not a product!).
Studio recordings are made as consumer products and intended for repeated listening as documents of a composer's art and the skills and insights of his performers under stringently controlled and near-private conditions.
Live recordings are memorabilia of unique public occasions, and as such do not fall into the category of general consumer articles. Do they nevertheless serve the general public? No, because they cannot reproduce anything of the concert as an event - none of the aura, ambience, frisson, excitement (or boredom) of the audience, only the cold sound. Such a recording is essentially similar to a black and white photocopy of the Mona Lisa.
As it happens, I was present at the occasion of this recording; and it was profoundly affecting as great live performances by such great artists can be. Naturally I bought the album as a memento. But I cannot for a moment pretend that the sounds coming off the disk resemble much of what I experienced that evening. And if it is almost meaningless to me now, except as a reminder of what I witnessed, how much more senseless to you! If you did not know it was Pollini playing in Dresden, but had to judge this blindfold, you could not discern the inspiration it conveyed to the audience.
Nothing much else to add. From this point you're on your own. But there are two studio recordings from Pollini which both serve your need for fine readings of this concerto.
(The 4 stars are no value judgement, just a helpless indicator that the product is neither good nor bad, but just not a product!).
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Pollini recapitulates his previous great performances
8 Nov 2011
Format:Audio CD
This CD reflects the end game in a confusing round of musical chairs. After the Dresden Staatskapelle abruptly parted company with Fabio Luisi as music director, Christian Thielemann just as abruptly left the Munich Phil. to land in a much better orchestra. He brought his DG recording contract with him, although on Profil one can hear an impressive Bruckner 8th from Dresden when the two first got together. Luisi is now music director of the Metropolitan Oopera in all but title, while the Munich Phil., one suspects, will not be recording very much with a major label.
There was no need for a third recording by Pollini of the Brahms First Cto., his previous two with bohm and Abbado being high-profile events that displayed his prowess in this work. Perhaps he's lost some force in the grueling first movement, but otherwise we get what you'd expect, a superb performance by a great pianist on the verge of turning seventy next January. It's peculiar to me that Pollini can't summon the same virtuosic enthusiasm when he plays the Beethoven concertos, but his mastery here is unchallenged. Thielemann begins with an exaggerated contrast between the roaring opening theme and the lyrical second subject, but the pianist doesn't go along. As usual, Pollini's command is fairly Olympian; he rarely relaxes and isn't intimate. But Brahms conceived of his first concerto on a titanic scale, so I feel no loss.
Nothing unusual happens so far as tempo or phrasing goes. What makes Pollini's performance so striking is his ability to hold one's attention form first note to last in a continuous arc, a phenomenon I've experienced in his Carnegie Hall recitals. The catalog is crammed with great Brahms concerto recordings, even though reviewers tend to trot out the same recommendation of Gilels/Jochum (much too laborious for me) and Fleisher/Ezell. For anyone who wants to branch out a bit, there's Barenboim/Barbirolli, Curzon/Szell, Serkin/Szell, Moravec/Belohlavek, and the two best Pollini accounts - the Abbado and this new one.
If recorded sound is a deciding factor, I don't detect that this new recording is any better than Pollini's second one (with Abbado), and in fact the piano could be fuller and more realistic.
There was no need for a third recording by Pollini of the Brahms First Cto., his previous two with bohm and Abbado being high-profile events that displayed his prowess in this work. Perhaps he's lost some force in the grueling first movement, but otherwise we get what you'd expect, a superb performance by a great pianist on the verge of turning seventy next January. It's peculiar to me that Pollini can't summon the same virtuosic enthusiasm when he plays the Beethoven concertos, but his mastery here is unchallenged. Thielemann begins with an exaggerated contrast between the roaring opening theme and the lyrical second subject, but the pianist doesn't go along. As usual, Pollini's command is fairly Olympian; he rarely relaxes and isn't intimate. But Brahms conceived of his first concerto on a titanic scale, so I feel no loss.
Nothing unusual happens so far as tempo or phrasing goes. What makes Pollini's performance so striking is his ability to hold one's attention form first note to last in a continuous arc, a phenomenon I've experienced in his Carnegie Hall recitals. The catalog is crammed with great Brahms concerto recordings, even though reviewers tend to trot out the same recommendation of Gilels/Jochum (much too laborious for me) and Fleisher/Ezell. For anyone who wants to branch out a bit, there's Barenboim/Barbirolli, Curzon/Szell, Serkin/Szell, Moravec/Belohlavek, and the two best Pollini accounts - the Abbado and this new one.
If recorded sound is a deciding factor, I don't detect that this new recording is any better than Pollini's second one (with Abbado), and in fact the piano could be fuller and more realistic.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
14 Nov 2011
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have many recordings of the Brahms 1st piano concerto, including 2 earlier performances by Pollini. This is a piece that I cherish, though perhaps not as much as the 2nd (which is an unbelievable masterpiece). Anyway, the orchestration is beautiful, Thielemann gets a lot of wonderful beautiful thrusting surging lyrical powerful playing from his musicians -- and Pollini is a delight, absolutely muscular and Olympian, always extremely attentive and thorough, but definitely not fussy. The recording sound is fine, it's slightly dry but also very crisp -- you can hear an incredible amount of punctuation from otherwise neglected sections of the orchestra, like the Trumpets for example, but there isn't a lot of warmth per se -- overall, it sounds like a Symphony with Piano, and that's not necessarily a bad thing for this behemoth beauty.
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