BaL 24.03.12 - Schubert's Piano Sonata in C minor, D.958

[silvestrione]

The vagaries of Amazon! (Here was my URL for £38:http://www.amazon.co.uk/BRENDEL-PLAY...016181&sr=1-11)

Sounds great for £22.86 - Go for it.

It will be interesting to see how the Impromptus compare with the earlier Vox ones. The Philips ones are in my category of 'Don't play too often, in case the performances become too familiar'. One or two of them give me the shivers (in the best way).

I've ordered this too...really excited, as I had a few of the vinyls once but have only the treasured G Major Sonata now, which we were celebrating on another thread. Long wanted it on CD, if only because, as with my early Phillips Brendel Liszt, the discs are showing signs of wear.

[JFLL]

I've ordered this too...really excited, as I had a few of the vinyls once but have only the treasured G Major Sonata now, which we were celebrating on another thread. Long wanted it on CD, if only because, as with my early Phillips Brendel Liszt, the discs are showing signs of wear.

I've ordered it too. The only reservation I have is that the cover image says that the digital re-mastering process is 'AMSI - Ambient Surround Imaging'. This was new to me, so I googled it and found that some people think it's OK and others think it's terrible. I found this: "an optimised sensurround sound experience for audio surround systems. But with stereo systems you can also experience greater presence, more brilliance and a stereophonically refined panorama of sound. For a musical experience that's like being there 'live'. Developed at the Emil-Berliner-Haus, Hanover." In other words they've presumably tinkered with the sound more than somewhat. I hope the end result isn't too different from the old vinyls!

Eloquence seem to have brought out other boxes of what I assume are mainly Brendel's Philips analogue recordings, including the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas, a 5-CD Liszt set and Mozart's Piano Concertos 5-27, all at reasonable prices on Amazon. Maybe technophiles here can say what they think of this 'AMSI' business?

[Bryn]

My Eloquence Brendel Schubert AMSI set arrived today. I was a bit surprised to find the compilation was published some four years ago. I note there is a DECCA Duo set of D 958, 959, 960 and 946. Does anyone here have that set, and if so, can they please check the recording/first publication dates. Those in the Eloquence box were originally published in 1972 (the sonatas) and 1975 (the 3 piano pieces). I ask as I am tempted to get the duo set to compare the sound quality if they do indeed, as I suspect, derive from the same original recordings.

[vinteuil]

Bryn - I have this as a Philips Duo; recorded Salzburg 11/1971 (D959, D960); London 2/1972 (D958); London 6/1974 (D946). This compilation 1993 Philips Classics productions.

[Bryn]

Thanks vinteuil. Though the remastering pre-dates that of the Eloquence set by around a decade and a half, I still think it worth my ordering it to hear what I think of the different levels of processing.

[silvestrione]

My Brendel Spielt Schubert has also arrived. I listened to the C Minor. Wonderful! The slowing down for the second subject (after a long pause) still bothered me a little, but not nearly so much as years ago. But the energy, the attack in the vigorous passages, and the poetry of that second subject, and the slow movement. Th younger Brendel is more expansive, impassioned and poetic, the later, rather more severe and bleak, and uniformly intense, perhaps.

[verismissimo]

I have Walter Klien, Ingrid Haebler and Mitsuko Uchida.

I find the Uchida chilly. Her playing? The recording? Both?

I play and enjoy Haebler most. What a fine artist she was.

[JFLL]

My Brendel Spielt Schubert has also arrived.

Mine, too. To me the sound seems just fine, although my equipment isn't the highest of fi. Wonderful to have all these familiar recordings (and some I don't have on vinyl) in a little box, though I do miss the large pictures of Brendel looking alternatively like Eric Morecambe and Woody Allen.

Edit: I wonder what Amazon will make of the sudden spike in sales for this box, since I make it at least three For3 boarders who've bought the set in the last week.

[silvestrione]

Mine, too. To me the sound seems just fine, although my equipment isn't the highest of fi. Wonderful to have all these familiar recordings (and some I don't have on vinyl) in a little box, though I do miss the large pictures of Brendel looking alternatively like Eric Morecambe and Woody Allen.

[Nick Armstrong]

Have BAL listeners noted that the selected version of D958 will be played in full at 11.25am i.e. at the end of today's CD Review (not on Monday morning as usual)?

Happy listening all

[verismissimo]

Do you never sleep, dear Caliban?

[Don Petter]

Do you never sleep, dear Caliban?

Not with 'a thousand twangling instruments' humming about his ears!

[pastoralguy]

9.30 Building a Library: Harriet Smith with a personal recommendation from recordings of Schubert's Piano Sonata in C minor, D.958

Available versions:-

Leif Ove Andsnes
Paul Badura-Skoda
Paul Berkowitz
Malcolm Bilson (fortepiano)
Alfred Brendel (2/3 CD versions)
Alfred Brendel (DVD)
Philippe Cassard
Imogen Cooper
Meira Farkas
Anja German
Anthony Goldstone
Wilhelm Kempff
Walter Klien
Sebastian Knauer
Jeno Jando
Jin Ju
Elisabeth Leonskaja
Paul Lewis
Radu Lupu
Alan Marks
John Ogdon
Gülsin Onay
Murray Perahia
Maurizio Pollini
Sviatoslav Richter – 2 versions
Daniel Rohm
Andras Schiff
Craig Sheppard
Mitsuko Uchida
Christoph Ullrich
Jan Vermeulen
Christian Zacharias
Dieter Zechlin

What about Ida Haendel?!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Harriet Smith had her work cut out for her: this is one of the most multi-faceted works in the repertoire, and no single recording/performance can do it full justice. I don't envy her her task, and as it is, I share her high opinion of her "top four", but I would also have to include Lupu, Cooper and Kempff!

Her choice of Uchida fits in with her idea of the work as "unrelentingly tragic" (I can't remember her exact phrase): this is certainly a Winterreise interpretation. (Verismissimo describes it rather politely as "chilly" - I find it "white cold"! An intense reading, not for everyday listening. Personally, I "prefer" those performances which have a wider view of the emotional panorama of the work; the ones that find the dark humour of the Finale (the ones I think Ms Smith may possibly have been referring to when she rather sniffily dismissed those that reminded her of Dick Barton) as well as the horror, the horror.

[amateur51]

I enjoyed this BaL enormously, having previously feared (my prejudice) that Harriet Smith wouldn't do the piece & performances justice but these fears were unfounded. I was pleased to be reminded about Perhaia and Kempff and to hear the Staier, and to listen to Brendel's consistencies and developments too.

But most of all I was intrigued by her advocacy of Uchida whose 'live' Schubert operformances I have not enjoyed and whose boxed set I have not listened to thoroughly - I'll have to change that now.

Schiff seemed to get short shrift after Harriet's mention of his different approach to the opening measures - I'm not a great Schiff enthusiast but I was left wanting to hear more, as I was from the snippet that we heard from Philippe Cassard.

I remember hearing Nikolai Demidenko at Wigmore Hall many years ago playing the final 'demented tarantella' at a tremendously fast lick such that it became an earworm for several days.

All-in-all no urgent need for purchases but perhaps in due course ....