Alexis Weissenberg

[verismissimo]

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/01/sad-news-great-pianist-dies.html

[amateur51]

Weissenberg was an artist whom I never really 'got'. He had huge technical facility (hard-won possibly) and he often appeared to skate over the surface of music and its technical difficulties, giving his performances an appearance, for me, of superficiality.

Listeningto/watching the Petrushka in the second clip attached to the article, he plays pretty ferociously, blending a lot of detail that other pianists bring out, but at the same time he creates a very different but no less cogent 'image' of the piece.

Undoubtedly he was a formidable pianist and this news of his death is sad

[verismissimo]

More info on his curious life:

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/01/mysteries-of-a-vanishing-pianist-now-sadly-mourned.html

[amateur51]

More info on his curious life:

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddi...y-mourned.html

What a strange, almost non-article

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i have treasured his idiosyncratic and awe inspiring way with Bach solo keyboard ..wonderful triple disc set a decade or so ago

[amateur51]

i have treasured his idiosyncratic and awe inspiring way with Bach solo keyboard ..wonderful triple disc set a decade or so ago

Idiosyncratic & awe inspiring way indeed. I've risked his Goldberg variations ... I mean his version of JS Bach's Goldberg variations@ £6

[Auferstehen2]

Now that I'm talking about Beethoven, I feel safer on more familiar ground, rather than DSCH or RVW (c/o other threads)!

Sorry to disagree with you am51 (for the first time, I believe!), but I thought Weissenberg and Karajan gave the best accounts of Beethoven PCs 1 & 2 I’ve ever heard.

The crystalline clarity of the works may be more to do with Karajan’s keen ear for balance, but Weissenberg's keyboard work I though really got to the soul of the fresh and youthful work PC1, not lacking the odd moment of profundity I must say.

Mario

[PJPJ]

Here's a Weissenberg recording I've not heard - tempting:

http://www.78experience.com/welcome.php?mod=disque&disque_id=272

the pieces included in Marc-Andre Hamelin's disc:

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/al.asp?al=CDA67656&f=hamelin

[bluestateprommer]

NYT obit of Alexis Weissenberg

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/music/alexis-weissenberg-pianist-of-fire-and-ice-dies-at-82.html

[hafod]

Interestingly there is a 10cd set of Weissenberg due out on 6 February as an EMI Icon. Like another poster on this thread I too have never quite got Weissenberg but this may be an opportunity to reappraise. [For me the more tempting Icon due out on the same day is Cantelli - but that would be another thread].

[amateur51]

Interestingly there is a 10cd set of Weissenberg due out on 6 February as an EMI Icon. Like another poster on this thread I too have never quite got Weissenberg but this may be an opportunity to reappraise. [For me the more tempting Icon due out on the same day is Cantelli - but that would be another thread].

Thanks for this, hafod I listen with ever-open ears and I haven't heard the Beethoven concertos that Aufestehen refers to so perhaps therein lies the key ...

A box of Cantelli huh? It's time that he was re-appraised and brought to the attention of younger listeners but, rather like Furtwangler, there's a always a potential confusion about dates in the 'live' recordings.Can you imagine the programmes that Rob Cowan & Jonathan Swain would have made out of a Cantelli box in the good old days?

Sounds like there will be plenty of spending opportunities in 2012