Classical

Saint-Saëns’ Ascanio premiered at the Paris Opéra in March 1890 — a grand opera in five acts set at the court of François I, following the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini and his apprentice Ascanio through courtly intrigue, a king’s possessive mistress, and a girl hidden in a reliquary to escape a forced marriage. The opera is rarely staged today. What survives in regular repertoire are the ballet movements Saint-Saëns later transcribed for flute and piano. ...

The Goldbergs end where they began — the Aria returns verbatim after thirty variations. In the 1981 Gould, the returning Aria sounds lonelier than the opening one. It seems nothing changed. You did.

Schiff is the thinking pianist’s pianist — no showmanship, every phrase deliberate. His 2017 live recording at the Pierre Boulez Saal is the Goldbergs given back to Bach: legato, transparent, unmannered.

Radu Lupu (1945–2022) was famously reclusive — few recordings, almost no interviews, a public career conducted as if publicity were a mild embarrassment. He won the Leeds, the Van Cliburn, and the George Enescu competitions in the late 1960s and then largely refused to behave like someone who had. At the keyboard he never pushed a phrase toward you. His recording of Schubert’s final piano sonata, D.960 — the opening movement’s long, suspended melody arrives without urgency, as if he simply found it there and decided not to disturb it. ...

At twenty-two, Gould persuaded Columbia Records to let an unknown Canadian record Bach for his debut. The result was fast, angular, and completely sure of itself — ornaments cut like percussion, canons that snap, thirty variations in under forty minutes, and Gould humming audibly throughout the whole thing.

Gould recorded this in September 1981, three weeks before he died at fifty. The 1981 Goldbergs are slow, breathing, inhabited — where the 1955 was argument, this is something closer to acceptance.

Apple music classical has a marvelous collection of Vladimir Horowitz’s piano recitals—all the years, all the remarkable concert halls and performance: Vladimir Horowitz: The Unreleased Live Recordings 1966-1983 This recording CD costs minimum of $250 on Amazon, but now it’s free and available in highest possible stereo quality on Apple Music Classical. Run, Rach lovers. Vladimir Horowitz: The Unreleased Live Recordings 1966-1983 is an extensive collection of 50 CDs, documenting Horowitz’s live performances across 17 years. This set includes performances from the world’s most prestigious and iconic venues (mainly across the United States and Europe), including Carnegie Hall in New York City, Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., and the White House; and Royal Festival Hall in London, for the queen. ...

Steinway-piano dot com has the story of the meeting of the two perhaps most influential musicians among the piano community of the first half of the 20th century. Horowitz: the rising of a star Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff had each suffered great losses in the Russian Revolution of 1917. “We lost absolutely everything,” Horowitz told author, radio personality, and Steinway Artist David Dubal, as reported in Dubal’s book, Reflections from the Keyboard. “In 24 hours, all we had we lost.” ...

In Horowitz, fire sings through metal, glass, water and ice. The Carolina Philharmonic has the story “Zen and the Art of Piano | Vladimir Horowitz”, by David Michael Wolff. It’s about the artistic style of pianist Horowitz and his inspirational friendship with Rachmaninoff. The time was around the beginning of the 20th century—artists flee from the war and revolution in Russia to arrive in US: The young Horowitz had just landed off the boat in NYC and with all the sights the New World had to offer, his first stop was Rachmaninoff’s Manhattan apartment. The next day they met at the now famed basement of Steinway Hall so that Rachmaninoff could hear what the young artist could do with his colossal Third Concerto. They played through the entire work at two pianos. Can you imagine what that must have sounded like - these twin giants of 20th century pianism - their languages blending and playing off each other! ...

Andante Cantabile, generally means “singing and walking”, is a musical term—a descriptive marker atop a score to delineate the mood or tempo intended by the composer. It . This trend is particularly poignant in compositions of grand scale, where each movement, each phrase, carries its own distinct direction. Among the luminaries of the Andante Cantabile, Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 1 in D Major resonates profoundly, a masterpiece that I’ve previously explored in an older post. Yet, even this pales in comparison to what may be the zenith of this expression: ...