Piano Concerto

Saint-Sa���ns: Piano Concertos 1-5
$17.98
Pascal Roge is a master of the French piano repertoire. His recordings of Ravel, Debussy, and Poulenc are some of the best on the market. He has such control over the piano. His ideas are clear, clean, articulate, and most of all passionate. The Saint-Saens piano concerti have long been some undervalued scores to play. There isn't much competition for this set either, epsecially in regards to complete sets and modern recordings.

Other recordings that exist are Stephen Hough/Hyperion and Collard/EMI. These sets are great, but they don't exactly inject a French aesthetic or authenticity. The conductors on both Hyperion and EMI sets: Sakari Oramo and Andre Previn are not authoritive conductors in my opinion. Dutoit is a master of the French repertoire: Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc, Roussel, Faure, and of course Saint-Saens. Another reviewer mentioned the audio quality being bad and I certainly don't hear anything remotely bad about it. Perhaps this reviewer has never heard of the treble, midrange, and bass controls (they're located on your amplifier by the way). Anyway, all of these performances sound great and are performed beautifully.

This set is definitely the Saint-Saens piano concerti set to own first. Highly recommended.

Also checkout out Dutoit's other recordings of Saint-Saens:

Saint-Sa���ns: Danse Macabre
Saint-Saens: Violin Concertos 1 & 3
Saint-Sa���ns: Organ Symphony; Poulenc: Organ Concerto

Special edit: This set is with the London Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, and Royal Philharmonic.

Daniel Barenboim/Staatskapelle Berlin: Beethoven - Piano Concertos 1-5 [Blu-ray]
$45.98

Grieg, Chopin & Saint Saens Piano Concertos / Previn, Rubinstein, London Symphony Orchestra
$29.98
Artur Rubinstein, at age 88, recorded these concertos in the Croydon Fairfield Hall in 1975 with Andr��� Previn, then music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, one of the world's best ensembles. There is no audience, and in effect these are studio recordings in full dress. The video is good for its vintage (despite some gimmicky filming), the audio quite fine. As was customary at the time, the piano is over-miked in relation to the orchestra, but this is less noticeable in the "stereo" setting than in DTS 5.1. Rubinstein is amazingly strong and nimble-fingered and his interpretations, regardless of his impenetrable facial expression and consistently straightforward approach to the scores, are at times moving and always musical. Tempi are deliberate for the most part, but not excessively so. There are no surprising new insights into these scores. To the credit of the producers, a few audible glitches have not been edited. The Grieg is played stately with the appropriate grandeur, and the Chopin sparkles. In the Saint-Sa���ns, the comparative lightweight among the concertos, Rubinstein pulls all the stops to make up in sheer virtuosity for the thin musical substance. Previn is a considerate but forceful presence on the podium, a pianist himself who knows when to step back in favor of the soloist. The bonus interview "Rubinstein at 90" is a precious document, although the skillful interviewer rarely manages to penetrate the poised and elegant fa���ade of the man and the artist.

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concertos 1, 2 & 3 - Prokofiev: Piano Concerto 5 - Bartok: Piano Concerto 2 - Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, Lorin Maazel
$11.98
This Gemini EMI set (actually, a reissue of a former Double Forte item) offers a bizarre collection of Gilels's and Richter's recordings, which would certainly annoy them both. A posthumous pairing of Richter and Gilels in an almost all-Russian set reflects a British taste and a Western marketing perspective: in Russia, it is different categories of people, who buy Richter and Gilels. These two great pianists not only hated each other, but also disapproved a great deal in their rival's repertory. I doubt that Gilels would record Bart���k's 2nd concerto in studio, and I am sure that Richter would not even touch Tchaikovsky's 2nd and 3rd concertos. It is Lorin Maazel and his EMI contract, that unite Richter and Gilels on this 2CD-set. I take the point made by the fellow reviewer that Maazel's conducting of the LSO and Orchestre de Paris (in Richter's recordings)is a greater success than his cooperation with the New Philharmonia (in Gilels's recordings).
Actually, each part of the collection has its merits: the recordings of Tchaikovsky's 2nd and 3rd concertos are rather rare, and both Richter's recordings included in this set rate among the best versions in the discography of Bart���k's 2nd concerto (Sz. 95, and not Sz. 83, as mistakenly identified on the CD) and Prokofiev's 5th. It is perhaps not a bad idea to grab both for a cheap price. I wonder, however, how many people, except for professional music critics, would listen to all this with an equal interest.
My own taste is on Richter's side. I am not enthusiastic about Tchaikovsky's 2nd and 3rd concertos and will keep silent about the performance. As far as I know, there is a Pletnev/Fedoseev version of all three concertos plus Concert Phantasy in G, Op. 56: it is available on Virgin Veritas for an even cheaper price. Tchaikovsky's 1st concerto is so overplayed that it is like bad health for me: one notices the difference, when something goes wrong. I have heard so many bad and mediocre Tchaikovsky's Firsts in concert that I don't want to rate any successful versions. Here you get a modern and dry account, free from pompous excesses. I hear a soloist with a high piano culture. But I am not charmed. As Santa Fe listener correctly states in his review, Gilels is miked more naturally than Richter, not too close to the piano.
Bart���k's 2nd concerto and Prokofiev's Fifth are the real gems of this collection. That Richter agreed to record them proves that he thought high of the music: he refused to play some Beethoven concertos, let alone most XX century concertos. Richter had some concerns about Bart���k's style, too. But here his playing is extremely convinced. I especially admire Richter's impassioned approach to the slow movement - the devilish scherzo in the central episode and rhapsodic fortissimo chords in the conclusion. Maazel is a very able and sensitive partner and a fine colorist: both the string and the brass sections of the Orchestre de Paris sound really impressive. In the final movement Maazel does not reach the rhythmic tension of Ferenc Fricsay (see his legendary version with G���za Anda on DG 447 399-2), but who does? I love Richter's version from the LP time - it was my first acquaintance with Bart���k's concerto. Despite of it, I now find Fricsay-Anda's version equally powerful, but more profound and exact than Maazel-Richter. But then...Why treat them as alternatives, if you love great music-making? Buy both: on Fricsay-Anda CD you will find two other Bart���k concertos, and on this CD-set you will get Prokofiev with Richter.
As for Prokofiev's 5th concerto w. Richter-Maazel, it is simply the best recording of this music. Later versions (cf. Ashkenazy-Previn or Krainev-Kitayenko) are tame and lifeless. Both Richter and Maazel perform the score with an excitement. Their cooperation is especially fine in the first two movements: the opening Allegro has many abrupt modulations from major to minor, which might seem banal, if they are articulated less sharply than here. The second movement is a fascinating hybrid of a crazy gavotte and a hooligan march, and Maazel promptly responds with brass fanfares and high woodwinds to Richter's deliberately stumbling pace and his dashing glissandi (track 3 on CD 2, around [2'12] and [3'57]).
Recommended - with the caveats expressed above. The price is simply unbeatable. For Richter's collectors I can add that these Prokofiev and Bart���k recordings were recently included in the EMI 14 CD set `Icon - Sviatoslav Richter'.

Anton Zimmerling