# Recordings that show a different side



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

So, recently I decided to buy Lang Lang's performance of Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto with Gergiev and the Marinskii Orchestra.
Most of the reviews I found were not too positive, but Ive really come to enjoy and respect his interpretation.

He presents the piece in a rather calm, dreamy manner. All of his arpeggios and scales are super smooth and you can hear every single note. People have complained that it lacks passion and heroism, but I believe Lang Lang has brought out a completely different side to the work - that of pure and crystalline beauty.

The 2nd movement lulls me into deep trance.

Do you have any favourite recordings that contrast deeply with the 'standard' view on a piece?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

emiellucifuge said:


> So, recently I decided to buy Lang Lang's performance of Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto with Gergiev and the Marinskii Orchestra.
> Most of the reviews I found were not too positive, but Ive really come to enjoy and respect his interpretation.
> 
> He presents the piece in a rather calm, dreamy manner. All of his arpeggios and scales are super smooth and you can hear every single note. People have complained that it lacks passion and heroism, but I believe Lang Lang has brought out a completely different side to the work - that of pure and crystalline beauty.
> ...


Your description reminds me of the Cliburn/Reiner recording. I somehow doubt that Reiner's interpretation sounds like Gergiev's, but I suppose it's possible.

The Cliburn/Reiner Beethoven 5th has similar attributes, certainly not the 'standard view'.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Demidenko and Lazarev make you listen to melodies and rhythms inside this utterly well known first piano concerto of Tchaikovsky, especially in the 2nd movement, that really astounded me. Indeed very different!


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

Hey Annie: any Glenn Gould recordings to propose?


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

While not the way to like to hear it, this performance of the Grieg concerto goes at an almost haunting pace and the finale of the third movement gets exceptionally slow to the point of sheer bliss...the horns at that point are so rich and bright, they go directly under my skin and straight into the soul...my record warped (my fault) and so I haven't heard it in years but I'm gonna check right now if they sell it on amazon or cdu or sth...nice thread.








Oh my goodness, I can't believe this is it!...I've seen this disc all my life!...time to order


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

What immediately comes to my mind is THIS recording of *Liszt's Sonata in B minor *put down by *Vladimir Horowitz *in the 1930's. I'd describe it as brooding, epic, frenetic & dark, a world away from some of the more refined & "calculated" performances of it I've heard. But I'm not sure if this is a "non-standard" performance, since from what I've read, it's still considered as a kind of benchmark all these decades later. In any case, the cd notes say that someone at the time said that Horowitz should have been banned from playing the piano, something like that, but probably said in jest...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Sid James said:


> What immediately comes to my mind is THIS recording of *Liszt's Sonata in B minor *put down by *Vladimir Horowitz *in the 1930's. I'd describe it as brooding, epic, frenetic & dark, a world away from some of the more refined & "calculated" performances of it I've heard. But I'm not sure if this is a "non-standard" performance, since from what I've read, it's still considered as a kind of benchmark all these decades later. In any case, the cd notes say that someone at the time said that Horowitz should have been banned from playing the piano, something like that, but probably said in jest...


I supect it was said in rueful jest. I think that performance is flawed, but if it were recorded in better sound the range of 'voices'/timbres VH could make a piano produce, with little apparent effort, impressing his pianist contemporaries - and his audiences - would be clearer. In that sonata Liszt _expected_ the pianist to provide the variation that is hinted at in the score; some of 'em do it, some don't.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Though I wouldn't recommend this as one's first exposure to Satie, Reinbert de Leeuw's version of Satie is zen-like. Although the Gymnopedies and Gnoissiennes are less like dances and more like Tai Chi, he plays the rest of these quasi-religious pieces like a monk isolated in a cell trying to suspend time into what T.S. Eliot called "the point, the still point."


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

If, like me, you were tired of the overexposed Vivaldi Four Seasons, then try Fabio Biondi's refreshing and bold approach. It also uses Vivaldi's original manuscripts and not the slightly sanitised Amsterdam published version of 1725.

Spring





Summer





Autumn





Winter


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

This:










Purely because it's so damn slow. Worth a listen once every 80 years.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*@ Manxfeeder* - I've just got a reissue of the de Leeuw Satie disc not long ago, haven't listened to it yet, when I do I'll keep your thoughts in mind. I can hear what you're saying re his piano playing style, I've got him doing Messiaen's _Quartet for the End of Time _& yes, he gives it a sense of suspended animation more than I've heard others do it, kind of floaty, off the planet stuff, appropriate for that work in a way...


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## Curiosity (Jul 10, 2011)




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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Weissenberg's Chopin cycle is considered to take and indeed takes a "diffrent" view on the music, though I can't say I like it. At the other hand every take on Chopin (at least by those really outstanding pianists) is diffrent, that's the whole specificity of this music. 

I also think that Kubelik's Mahler DG cycle has a chamber qualities not to be found in any other Mahler cycle I've ever heard. It works with some symphonies, with some it doesn't.


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

Aramis said:


> I also think that Kubelik's Mahler DG cycle has a chamber qualities not to be found in any other Mahler cycle I've ever heard. It works with some symphonies, with some it doesn't.


I own 1, 2, 4 and 5 on vinyl from that cycle. I especially am fond of 2 and 4.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Aramis said:


> Weissenberg's Chopin cycle is considered to take and indeed takes a "diffrent" view on the music, though I can't say I like it. At the other hand every take on Chopin (at least by those really outstanding pianists) is diffrent, that's the whole specificity of this music.


Weissenberg's Chopin is certainly 'different'; viva la difference. There seem to be many pianist subscribers to the middle ground, which does not 'serve the music well'. And then there are the salon interpreters...



> I also think that Kubelik's Mahler DG cycle has a chamber qualities not to be found in any other Mahler cycle I've ever heard. It works with some symphonies, with some it doesn't.


Kubelik's Dvorak cycle on LPs is also quite different, at least some of it. His Symphony No. 6 is pretty grim. I wonder if Shostakovitch heard it.


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## annie (Jul 31, 2011)

itywltmt said:


> Hey Annie: any Glenn Gould recordings to propose?


i wouldn't know which one to pick . what about Brahms piano concerto no 1 with bernstein/NYPO '62? like bernstein says "don't be afraid mr. gould is here" : 
http://kiwi6.com/file/cu3a5jueig

tchaikovsky piano concerto no 1 by sudbin/neschling reflects a very different side for sure...at least that the pianist has one...


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

annie said:


> i wouldn't know which one to pick . what about Brahms piano concerto no 1 with bernstein/NYPO '62? like bernstein says "don't be afraid mr. gould is here" :
> http://kiwi6.com/file/cu3a5jueig


I own the recording, and it is DEFINITELY a perfiormance that is "outside the box". What it does, however, is provide a different "picture" of the Brahms concerto, and it kind of grows on you, really.

The anecdote goes that, on that fateful night in April, Bernstein had a "Plan B" ready for the second half of the concert, planning to fill the possibly AWOL Gould with Brahms' First Symphony, and the musicians didn't know until Gould was seen backstage minutes before the end of the intermission that the show was "on".

I have a lot of respect for both individua;\ls (Gould and Bernstein) and I take "in good faith" (as Mr. Bernstein put it) that he meant what he said in his impromptu speech - that he thought enough of Gould and his vision to conduct the performance himself. One has to note that the opening piece of that concert (Nielsen's Maskarade) had been conducted by a Bernstein assistant. However, I don't believe that (despite the appearances, including a radio interview included on the disc) their relationship ever recovered from the incident.

I'm sure this was one of the factors that lead to Gould's "retirement from public performance" in 1964.


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