Which is the Maurizio Pollini EMI recording down at the bottom right? Is it the Chopin Piano Concerto and some the the solo piano pieces that he recorded at around the same time?
The Beatles - Let It Be (5 CD + BluRay)
and Revolver (not shown)
I ordered this from Chalkys, which uses Amazon delivery service. This is great because it allows the buyer to track the delivery. However, on checking just now it said that it was rejected by the customer, which is odd, because I’m the customer and never even saw the delivery. Now I expect I’ll end up in some sort of dispute with the vendor.
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Hope it turns up for you Clive, as it’s a fabulous box set.
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Hi Graham, the back cover indicates that the concerto was recorded in 1960 and the other pieces in 1968. Hope this helps.
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Thanks for that.
So, a little history. Pollini won the Warsaw Piano Competition in 1960 and the most lucrative part of the prize was a contract to record Chopin with EMI. He duly recorded and released Chopin’s First Piano Concerto later in 1960 with the Philharmonia Orchestra (under Paul Kletzki), then promptly ‘retired’ and spent the next few years studying with fellow Italian great pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. He then recorded the solo Chopin pieces in 1967 or '68 (most, or all, of which are added to the CD that you have).
At that stage he parted company with EMI, and signed an exclusive contract with DGG. He made a series of exemplary recordings for DGG over the next few decades, and appeared all over the world with great conductors and orchestras, and in solo piano recitals. Fortunately for Londoners, he liked the Royal Festival Hall (despite its ‘difficult’ acoustics) and appeared there quite often, particularly when his chum Claudio Abbado was the LSO’s principal conductor.
DGG tried very hard over the years to get Pollini into the studios with Carlos Kleiber to record the five Beethoven Piano Concertos. Indeed, I have read that they got Pollini, Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic into a studio to record the "Emperor’ Concerto. During the session, some member of the orchestra had the temerity to ask Pollini a question about tempo, and Kleiber took offence and was in his car driving home before anyone knew what the hell was going on!
Pollini suffered with health problems (he was a very heavy smoker) over the years, and he has now retired from public performance.
I own most, if not all, of his records on LP, most of which are still in the catalogue. He was a particularly great interpreter of the Romantic piano repertoire, and his 3LP box containing Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas contains piano playing which I don’t think has ever been bettered. (I remember hearing a Radio 3 Building A Library piece on Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata years ago, where Pollini’s account was chosen, and Brendel’s account and others were made to sound puny by comparison.)
So I’m a bit of a fan.
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I would add just one thing to what I have written above.
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was a fantastic pianist (I don’t know of any better: just get your hands on the LP, or its equivalent CD, of his coupling of the Ravel Piano Concerto with Rachmaninov’s Fourth).
But he was what might be called ‘a decidedly odd cove’. As far as I know, Maurizio Pollini was the only pupil that Michelangeli deigned to have. But I have always been in equal parts amused and puzzled by the description of his method of teaching. He was said to teach ‘in complete silence and from a distance’.
I have never worked out what to make of that.
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That’s great. Thanks for all the extra background! I wondered why the gap between the EMI 1960 recording (which I also have on vinyl) and the later DG recordings. It’s quite a story! I have quite of few of the DG solo and concerto recordings of Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Stravinsky etc. and Beethoven mainly in CD box sets, including that of the ‘Hammerklavier’. I also have the last two fairly recent DG Chopin recitals on CD. I saw Pollini live at the RFH in February 2011 (Schubert Piano Sonatas). I also have that Michelangeli recording and will hear it differently now!
I consider myself privileged to have seen Maurizio Pollini at the Royal Festival Hall on a few occasions. He was an extraordinary musician.
I also saw Emil Gilels at the RFH on one occasion in an all-Mozart concert, playing with and conducting a chamber-sized orchestra (the ECO, perhaps?). I couldn’t give the date, but it was the same evening as the SAS took out the terrorists occupying the Iranian Embassy across London at Lancaster Gate. So quite a lot of excitement in London that night.
Gilels was superb, by the way! (And the SAS seemed to be on their game too.)
Worth every penny of the £2.99 I paid at the tills in HMV….
It’s growing on me, it’s nice in its own right but is it a classic ABBA album? I don’t currently think so.
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That’s great, thanks for the reminiscences. I never saw Gilels live. Must have been summer 1980 from the world events. Pianism from another age!
It was a fantastic evening, which doesn’t seem like 40-odd years ago.
I don’t think that Gilels travelled much outside the Soviet Union, and I don’t remember him giving any other concerts in London while I lived there. He was stocky figure, and looked almost as if he had come onto the stage for a punch up, rather than to lead and play Mozart’s music with exceptional brilliance and clarity.
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Acid Tongue
RP inspired purchase
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Two limited edition reissues of two of John Williams’ most wonderful scores: ET and Jurassic Park:
Both on the boutique label La-La-Land Records from California. They took a while to get to me in Wiltshire!
According to the liner notes, the original 1982 release of the soundtrack to ET was a digital recording which must have been a novelty for a film score in the early 80s.
Mark
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The latest news in this sorry saga is that the package, which was being returned to the vendor, Chalkys, by Amazon delivery service, has now been lost somewhere in Swindon! For some reason I was expecting Amazon delivery service to be more reliable than Royal Mail. More fool me.
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And another having heard it on RP (although I’ve got lots of other Frank Black stuff).
I have lost count as tend to buy 2 or 3 at a time online, certainly one of the more recent was Muddy Waters Folk Singer, this was a German produced CD early 00s release. The recording quality and mastering are some of the best I think I have heard digitally, it literally felt like he was in the room, real presence, not hi-fi more live/real, not sure if my new speaker cable from Townshend played a part but I can’t rate this CD high enough.
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I do love a film score. My system agrees with me on that point!
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Interestingly I’m now getting Err every time I load this ABBA disc in. Is the £2.99 I paid just for a limited number of plays?
Thankfully that Err message is only on this disc. Phew!
Best news you could have in my opinion! 
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