Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A magnificent recording, 21 Jun 2009
I was lucky enough to be present at the actual RFH performance of the 3rd concerto. It was a blistering account. The recording captures all that we heard live, though inevitably has been touched up for repeated listening with some edits (I remember a slightly cumbersome join between orchestra and piano at one point in the 'real thing'.)
I'm not going to go into detail, but these performances are truly on fire. No 2 has all the necessary menace and thundering virtuosity from all parties. No 3 is at times magical, at others lithe and vibrant, it is devilishly exciting and captures so much passion and wit. I suppose all this is hardly surprising when you have two masters of the keyboard as well as of Russian music at the helm, both of whom know and understand these works so deeply. Indeed, this music is in their bloodstreams! The recording is so wonderfully present, and you feel an even greater sense of involvement as a result.
I love these two concertos, and I have never heard them like this. Buy with confidence and enjoy!
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Prokofiev versus Kissin/Ashkenazy..., 12 May 2009
I rejoiced listening to Evgeny Kissin in this quintessential Russian repertoire. And a full recommendation from UK's pre-eminent critic finished convincing me to purchase this CD. But this time, contrary to the rave review offered by Norman Lebrecht, the product is hardly an "absorbing record" and even less of an "absolutely indispensable" nature.
We shall of course talk about the music and what Kissin and Ashkenazy do of it, to it. But we shall first turn our attention toward those wonderful people at EMI who produced this marvel of technology.
Indeed this "thing" possesses unique features that make it technologically advanced: for instance, it is one of the rare concert recordings that are devoid of any cough or audience noises! Applauses are inexistent. Not once the usual sneeze comes troubling your enjoyment of this marketed "public" performance! In itself this is good of course BUT it's not all. The orchestra sound is also quite special: it never is wider than the width of the piano! As if the entire orchestra was fitted behind Kissin and his gorgeous tone Hamburg Steinway as a rectilinear grouping of musicians. Listening to this canned stuff, you'd never imagine a stage with a piano surrounded by an orchestra. Indeed a marvel of recording prowess! Even better, one feels the radio producers that undoubtedly will fry this one over and over will love it: the compression is perfect for boom box and FM radio since just as in pop music, the sound level hovers within safe boundaries, up during pianissimos and down during fortissimos and the balance of the "song" is centered on the lead piano/voice. So here we have a XXI century recording, a perfect negation of all what Mercury Living Presence would have stood for, a complete fakery of stage and dynamics! EMI engineers and producers: congratulations!
So how about the music making now? It is worth the sound!
Concerto No. 2: Evgeny Kissin's virtuosity is now becoming his worst enemy. There is little imagination at work here and indeed too much... liberty that is, with the text. Prokofiev knew what he wanted, he wrote it down and that is quite different from Mr. Kissin's pretense. Why is it the ego of these instrumentists cannot bear to simply play a melody when the music demands just that? Why do they always believe their little mannerism will set their interpretation apart lifting them to genius? Do they truly think they are above the composer? So why is Mr. Kissin thinking his overriding rubato would add to the architecture of the monumental first movement? Well it does not and in fact it simply destroys it. It does not matter to him because those are notes that can be "interpreted" as opposed to images of a story well told. He does not know how to do simple -not simplistic as his boring repeats indicate-. The second movement fares better but the orchestra soup lacks pulsation... The third mvt. is prosaic and the culmination of this total lack of lyricism transforms the last mvt. sublime moment into a heavy, clunky, insensitive, brushed over tune. Kissin runs on empty and Ashkenazy has the delicatesse of a jackhammer!
Piano Concerto No. 3: the same strange unobtrusive orchestra goes from sections to sections, rather abruptly in some cases, serving the over-complicated contortions of the soloist. And repeats are done in the same way since no imagination is at work here: this is the Monty Python sketch of the "I say Patato, you say potato" song in all its splendor. A nice accent that alone would have added a twist to the plot is repeated, identical and thus loses its meaning. It's all very much insistent not at all subtle... A rather percussive Kissin cannot seem to get the Hamburg Steinway to rock anywhere near where Prokofiev demands. A New York Steinway would have offered more intensity in those pieces. And the gorgeous second mvt. or the lyric theme of the third? Well just a quick work, caricatural, not felt. Very little dialogue with the various sections of the orchestra can be detected. This is the art of representation not of the transformation. No story was told but hey since you bought the product...
Indeed this is an artistic regression for this great pianist compared to his 1993 performance of the Third in NYC that I attended and the EMI manipulated recording is a disgrace showing profound disrespect to classical music lovers and concertgoers. This product is a fake from start to end: fake music making, fake emotion and fake recording! Let's give it what it deserves: fake sales!
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the bests of 3rd concerto, and the very best of 2nd concerto, 31 May 2009
This is Kissin's second recording of the the 3rd piano concerto by Prokofiev, but he has never recorded the 2nd concerto before. His jaw-dropping playing techniques, along with the sharp, full-body sound from his piano like a well-polished steel surface, fit very well with the piano pieces by Prokofiev.
With his previos recording of the 3rd (with Abbado and Berlin Philharmonic) still available, this new recording is a great welcome as his score reading has matured over the past 10 years. His first recording of the 2nd concerto is even more pleasing as this piece is notoriously difficult to play for its endless, ruthless violence that demands highest possible techniques. With Kissin at the piano, the tone-cluster like cadenza from the first movement vibrates the ground. You should have never heard of this piece as more convincing as it is played here, and this recording should be considered as the first choice.
Ashkenazy provides solid supports for both concertos, as he knows every single details of them through a pianist - played and recorded in the 1970's.
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~ Rachmaninov
~ Piotr Anderszewski
~ Yuja Wang
~ Magdalena Kozená
~ Gidon Kremer Martha Argerich
