Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Greatest Piano Records of all time, 2 Oct 2003
P>I bought this recording when it came out it on LP in the late 50s. I found it amazing at the time (I was then a 13 year old piano fanatic) and over forty years later I still think it one of the greatest examples of piano playing and music making of all time.The Ravel is hors de concours. Marguerite Long with Ravel conducting sounds like a sewing machine (We know Ravel was not happy with her interpretation). Other pianists pull it around as if it were Jazz (e.g. Bernstein) or badly played Chopin. No one before or since has managed to get the Ravel sound: the balance between the Ravel classical metronome and the Ravel wild devil, between the singing piano and the brittle piano, between Couperin and Jazz, between what Perlemuter described as "the two pianos of Ravel". Listen to Michelangeli's performance of Gaspard, has anyone ever got it better? I attended Vlado Perlemuter's master classes in the sixties (Vlado studied all Ravel's piano works with the composer) and I myself played the G major concerto when I was in my twenties so I know how "the tricks" are done; but when Michelangeli does them, I am lost in the excitement and the magic of the music. Listen to the cadenza of the first movement: the theme first in the left hand then picked out in right-hand trills (in imitation of a a flexatone). That is extraordinary music making riding on top of transcendental piano playing - it is as awesome now as it was forty years ago and as it will be in fifty years time. As for the Rachmaninov: Interestingly, some ten years ago, the BBC radio programme "Interpretations on Record" judged Michelangeli's performance "better in many respects" than S. Rachmaninov's. I couldn't agree more! I love/revere/worship Rachmaninov's own performances of his concertos, his rubato and phrasing are distinctive and inimitable with not a jot of vulgarity or playing to the gallery. While Michelangeli never tries to mimic Rachmaninov's playing, he does manage to capture Rachmaninov's ability to present passion under control albeit on the point of exploding. Michelangeli has drive, lyricism and perfect balance between emotion and form. He has Horowitz' virtuosity without the flashing neon signs, he has Rachmaninov's control without the sometimes self-conscious self-restraint. This is some of the greatest piano playing you will ever hear. If you don't own these performances, go out and buy them at once and cherish them.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
AM I MISSING SOMETHING?, 20 Feb 2002
Of all Michelangeli's recordings this has probably
been the most unanimously and superlatively praised. And among Michelangeli's many votaries I keep finding merit or at least interest in performances where others don't. So why, I wonder, do I not find this one of
his recordings that I return to with most enthusiasm? It's not that I'm cool towards the music -- I am fond of Rachmaninoff and probably fonder than most of this less-played concerto, and I am a serious devotee of Ravel. It's something about the playing, and I'll make a stumbling attempt to say what. Michelangeli was some sort of ultimate in technical control in a world of 'ultimates', Horowitz, Cziffra, Pollini, Kissin etc etc. However even his warmest admirers like myself know what he could be like on the wrong day -- deadpan, metronomic and expressionless, and there is just the faintest hint of that tendency here. In the Rachmaninoff I liked everything except one thing, and that unfortunately was the opening chords, where the squareness of M's rhythm put me off badly. Listening to the composer I got a different impression although the overall approach was not much different, and in the rest of the piece M is fully the composer's equal and even outshines him at the point in the first movement where the excitement starts to build up. In the Ravel I started disappointed by the tameness of the opening whip-crack, and although everything was basically right after that I ended disappointed. It is all just a bit anaemic. You may find Argerich a bit o.t.t. in her impetuosity (she was one of M's pupils and I suspect he was terrified of her), but this piece is a magnet for good performances, in which respect if in no other it resembles the Brahms d minor, and you will not find many bad ones. Try Samson Francois for one.
What has raised just a few eyebrows in reviews I have seen is M's handling of the long solo at the start of the slow movement where he plays left-hand-down throughout, an effect that went through an era of being politically incorrect but which I like very much. Indeed I like M better than anyone else here, and I am delighted that this particular tradition, so much a part of the greatness of Backhaus Horowitz and Serkin as well as Michelangeli himself, is being restored to respectability by Zacharias.They can't all be out of step except me, I suppose.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Uncredible Playing, 19 Aug 2009
Michelangeli's coupling of these two concertos has long been reckoned to be one of the greatest - if not the greatest - concerto recording of all time. It's not just that his pianism is perfect - it's that it generates a life and electricity of its own that carries all before it. The Ravel is scintillating - just listen to the finale taken at break-neck pace yet phrased so delicately. And the playing in the Rach 4 makes you wonder just why this concerto is neglected. it emerges here as a masterpiece in its own right, different from its famous predecessors, but a new dimension in what the composer had to say. Fabulous! But now and enjoy!
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~ Ludwig van Beethoven
~ Busch Quartet
~ Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin
~ Ludwig van Beethoven
~ Johann Sebastian Bach
