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| Philips Sequenza (Mid price) (LP) 6527 182 (Cassette) 7311 182 From 6700018 (10/70). |
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I seem to have more, and more generally glorious, accounts of this piano concerto on my shelves than of virtually any other. Some versions are the more valuable now because of their deletion: Solomon's (HMV mono XLP30093, 12/67—nla), Curzon's (Decca mono ACL320, 7/69 --nla), Arrau's with Giulini (Columbia SAX2466, 3/63—nla), and Serkin's (CBS 72557, 9/67—nla). Some notable versions happily remain. I think of that glorious 1967 Indian Summer performance by Backhaus, with Bohm and the VPO (Decca JB94, 2/81); the immensely distinguished version by the late Geza Anda with the BPO under the late and much-missed Ferenc Fricsay (DG 2548 282, 5/79), a version memorable, above all, for its idiomatic, sunlit account of the finale; the once sensational Richter/Leinsdorf performance (RCA GL11267, 10/78); and, of course, the Gilels/Jochum (DG 2542 151, 4/81). Nonetheless, our perception of the many-sidedness and simple reach of this glorious work would be incomplete without Arrau's serene and majestic 1969 Concertgebouw version. There was more nonchalance in Curzon's reading, and Solomon's; more sheer electricity in Serkin's. Yet, well recorded (the new pressigs render the recording limpid and clean) and ably accompanied, Arrau remains the lofty arbiter of several views, the most effortlessly far-seeing of all exponents of this greatest of all nineteenth-century piano concertos.
RO