BaL 17.09.22 - Schubert: Piano Trio no. 1 in B flat (D.898)

[Mal]

Schubert: Complete Piano Trios
by SCHUBERT/GRYPHON TRIO

... available to listen for free if you have Amazon Prime.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

BaL at 10.30 - Saturdays will never be the same again!

It means I can run the Parkrun at a more leisurely pace.

[Bryn]

For anyone interested in the Gryphon set, they have a 9 CD compilation, 'Great Piano Trios', which as a download goes for about the same price as the Schubert alone.

Lossy MP3 pr FLAC? My guess is the former, at that price.

[RichardB]

I'm happy to stick with Corot & co., the Beaux Arts, and Levin & co. (I also have the Immerseel & co., and a few others to hand).

Note though that the recording by Immerseel et al. is rather short on repeats, which I am not so keen on (being more inclined towards La Gaia Scienza which contains all of them). What is the Levin et al. recording like in that regard?

[Mal]

Lossy MP3 pr FLAC? My guess is the former, at that price.

Amazon Prime streams carry a 256Kbps bit rate. Amazon Unlimited offers HD audio (CD quality) for £8.99 a month, and higher bit rate music at higher cost.

[CallMePaul]

Cortot made up for both of them

Do you have recordings by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf or Herbert von Karajan, who were both paid-up members of the NSDAP, Richard Strauss who held official posts in Nazi Germany, or Leonid Kogan who was a KGB officer as well as a fine violinist and who stimied the careers of many Soviet musicians (he prevented Rostropovich from touring in the west for many years)?

[Retune]

Lossy MP3 pr FLAC? My guess is the former, at that price.

Oddly enough, the cheapest place I've seen the Gryphon 'Great Piano Trios' compilation is on Qobuz at £10.49 for 'CD quality', which I believe means FLAC on their site. Not bad for nearly 9 hours of music. No 24-bit download for the golden-eared, though (the Schubert alone does have this option).

[Mal]

The devil, an angel, and God make all the best music - the Casals performance has just been one of the most moving experiences of my life! Floods of tears in the andante...

[smittims]

Shostakovitch referred to Kogan (privately, if, indeed there could be a private letter in the Soviet Union) as 'the Communist-violinist'; a neat way of conveying disappproval in a way that could not be officially-disapproved.

[Mal]

For me Cortot, Thibaud and Casals remain unsurpassed, for instance Thibaud's phrase about half-way into the slow movement... One of those immortal moments in recording history...

... and the way he ends the movement, as if he's saying, "what have we just heard?" It's certainly not all about Casals, the other two play a near-equal part. But Casal's timbre and expressive range!

[Mal]

Rob Cowan, in his Guinness guide, chose Casals, Thibaud, and Cortot as his top preference (His review was one of the main reasons for me chancing the Casals box set... thank's Rob.)

"Don't be put off by the 1926 recording date: this is among the most spontaneous, most lyrical and most profoundly eloquent chamber music recordings ever made, and the sound ... is astonishingly good for the period."

For me, the sound was simply "astonishingly good, never mind the period". I preferred the sound to the Beaux Arts. Late 90s remastering vs. early 80s? (I don't know what remastering the BBC were using for their dismal little clip but the sound was *much* better on my CD. It's in https://www.discogs.com/release/1102...f-Pablo-Casals.)

Rob also mentions three other old performances as "major rivals" and bluntly adds, "No modern recordings can quite rival any of these older versions."

[smittims]

I wonder if they'd performed it shortly before that inspired session; their first recording, too! Sadly, the Beethoven 'Kakadu' variations the next day didn't come out so well.

[Mal]

I wonder if they'd performed it shortly before that inspired session; their first recording, too! Sadly, the Beethoven 'Kakadu' variations the next day didn't come out so well.

That comes right after the Trio on my CD, written as Beethoven: Variations on Mozart's "Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen". I gave up after a few minutes... I thought I might have been too devastated to take in another piece... What do you think is wrong with it? It's certainy a lot noisier! The crackles were back.

[smittims]

I think the masters were destroyed for reasons of faulty balance, and the recording has survived form a set of test pressings, one of which was damaged. If you can get past the technical problems, though, its a lovely performance.

[richardfinegold]

Do you have recordings by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf or Herbert von Karajan, who were both paid-up members of the NSDAP, Richard Strauss who held official posts in Nazi Germany, or Leonid Kogan who was a KGB officer as well as a fine violinist and who stimied the careers of many Soviet musicians (he prevented Rostropovich from touring in the west for many years)?

This is old news CMP. The difference is that Cortot was an enthusiastic participant in in the Vichy Government and heartily endorsed the Nazi Policies, including removing Jews from Public Life. The other two that you cite were opportunists. It’s fairly clear that HvK viewed party membership as a Tradesman might view having to join a labor union. Schwarzkopf probably enjoyed her sexual liaisons with the various Nazi bigwigs she bedded. Your historical knowledge to me seems quite limited.

Try. Alfred Cortot, genius pianist and Nazi collaborator-Commentary Magazine at https://www.commentary.org-articles
or Alfred Cortot-Music and the Holocaust. holocaust music.Orr.org-Alfred Cortot.