Astonishing Performances That Were Totally Unexpected Given The Performer

[Guest]

I was spring-cleaning my numerous Amazon Wishlists this week, when I cam across Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's recording on DG of the Emperor Concerto with Giulini and the VPO.

It has been loitering there for a year or so now and I'd quite forgotten why I'd put it there. Michelangeli playing Beethoven? Pah!

I re-read the ecstatic 5-star reviews, hunted down the recording on Qobuz, sat back and listened.

I was gripped from the first bar to last. A scorching live performance, perhaps never bettered. Given the performer and the repertoire, I really hadn't been expecting such a revelatory reading.

Who has surprised you in a like manner?

[amateur51]

I was spring-cleaning my numerous Amazon Wishlists this week, when I cam across Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's recording on DG of the Emperor Concerto with Giulini and the VPO.

It has been loitering there for a year or so now and I'd quite forgotten why I'd put it there. Michaelangeli playing Beethoven? Pah!

I re-read the ecstatic 5-star reviews, hunted down the recording on Qobuz, sat back and listened.

I was gripped from the first bar to last. A scorching live performance, perhaps never bettered. Given the performer and the repertoire, I really hadn't been expecting such a revelatory reading.

Who has surprised you in a like manner?

I don't know if this is the same performance, Throppers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNHQ1BOacg

[Thropplenoggin]

I don't know if this is the same performance, Throppers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNHQ1BOacg

Thanks, Ams. That's my next 45 minutes sorted.

No idea if it is the same but one of the board's wise owls will know.

[Thropplenoggin]

Surely someone has something to contribute to this most perspicacious of threads!

[Sir Velo]

Not much time at the moment for a full post but, off the top of my head, what about Solti's Elgar? That was written off by all the cassandras before a note was heard.

Others that come to mind:

Previn's VW Pastoral symphony - a brash American at home in the cowpats
Karajan's 2nd Viennese school recordings - never shown any inclination or aptitude for this repertoire before, IIRC.
Karajan's Shostakovich 10 (1st recording - 1967, I think) - still unsurpassed for many commentators. What might he have made of the 5th, or 8th?
Uchida's 2nd Viennese school piano recording (inc a volcanic Berg sonata) - where did that spring from?
Gilels'' Lyric Pieces - who knew?
Brahms PC 1 - Curzon; LSO;Szell - bullied? cajoled? coaxed? A miracle, however it happened!

[Nick Armstrong]

Surely someone has something to contribute to this most perspicacious of threads!

Love that smiley.

I'd nominate Sir Adrian Boult conducting Ravel's 'Daphnis & Chloë'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Sym...159248&sr=1-20

[verismissimo]

Glenn Gould's Schoenberg
Bernstein's Haydn

Don't know if this counts, but I just bought (at Oxfam on LPs) Boult's EMI Brahms symphony cycle, which I've steered clear of for several decades, and it's wonderful. LPO on top form.

[Tony Halstead]

it's wonderful. LPO on top form

excepting No.3 in which the orchestra is the LSO. ( that is, unless there are TWO EMI Boult/ Brahms cycles?)

[Tony Halstead]

Previn's VW Pastoral symphony - a brash American at home in the cowpats

Hang on there... not so 'brash' an American that he didn't totally find the key to this wonderful music.

In my experience of playing, in Previn's recorded cycle, Symphonies 2,3 and 9 ( I wish it had been more) my feeling was / is that he truly understood the music and brought very great love and deep musical intuition to it.

[Sir Velo]

Hang on there... not so 'brash' an American that he didn't totally find the key to this wonderful music.

That's my point. A great recording; but a surprise that a supposedly "brash" American could get to the heart of the matter.

[richardfinegold]

I was spring-cleaning my numerous Amazon Wishlists this week, when I cam across Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's recording on DG of the Emperor Concerto with Giulini and the VPO.

It has been loitering there for a year or so now and I'd quite forgotten why I'd put it there. Michelangeli playing Beethoven? Pah!

I re-read the ecstatic 5-star reviews, hunted down the recording on Qobuz, sat back and listened.

I was gripped from the first bar to last. A scorching live performance, perhaps never bettered. Given the performer and the repertoire, I really hadn't been expecting such a revelatory reading.

Who has surprised you in a like manner?

I've known that recording for a while. Why did it surprise you? You should also check out his version of the Op.7 Piano Sonata.

[richardfinegold]

Love that smiley.

I'd nominate Sir Adrian Boult conducting Ravel's 'Daphnis & Chloë'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Sym...159248&sr=1-20

Why? I think that Boult was a very versatile conductor.

[Nick Armstrong]

Why? I think that Boult was a very versatile conductor.

Ignorance on my part, until I heard that performance

[Pabmusic]

Ignorance on my part, until I heard that performance

Boult's earliest extended engagement was with Diaghilev's ballet, just after WW1. That's why his first recording was of Scarlatti/Tommasini The Good-Humoured Ladies in 1920 (his second was of Butterworth's Shropshire Lad Rhapsody) and the second Daphnis & Chloe suite was a regular feature from this early period. In fact, the first concert ever given by the BBC SO (22 Oct 1930) was:

Wagner: Flying Dutchman Overture
Saint-Saens: Cello Concerto (Suggia)
Brahms: Symphony No. 4
Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe, Suite No. 2

The Ravel was (according to Nicholas Kenyon) "the revelation of the evening".

excepting No.3 in which the orchestra is the LSO. ( that is, unless there are TWO EMI Boult/ Brahms cycles?)

Spot on. There are two Boult Brahms symphony cycles though, but the 1950s set was for Pye/Nixa (it's available now as download from Naxos).

[richardfinegold]

Ignorance on my part, until I heard that performance

I have to admit that I was recently guilty of making the same mistake about Boult. I had recently purchased a used lp of his Mahler 1 on Everest and loved it. I wasn't sure that Boult and Mahler were a good match but after hearing that recording it reawakened an interest in Boult for me and I am astonished by his range of repertoire. In the States we tended to pigeonhole him as a specialist in British Music.