Track Listing

1. Allegro maestoso
2. Andante
3. Allegretto
4. Allegro
5. Andante
6. Allegro (Rondo)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #575306 in Music
• Released on: 2000-08-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Customer Reviews

Hear The Lion's Velvet Paw
How does "the strength and softness of a lion's velvet paw" sound like? Edwin Fischer will give you the answer. His ability to balance and weigh each voice of a chord maiximizing the richness of the tone is rare, and he compounds it with a supreme eveness and a seamless legato! The result, his tone could very well outshine Arrau's had it not been restricted by the primitive recording devices.

Edwin Fischer marry "childlike simplicity to the sensitivity and wisdom of a master" ( Alfred Brendel) making his Mozart "a timeless beauty". Edwin Fischer lifts tragedy into the light, into the highest level of spirituality: the crust of the "simplicity" of Mozart's music, an another word, the smiles through tears sort of drama.

It is a well known fact that Edwin Fischer suffered from fits of nervousness which tends to pull him away from Mozart's light and aristocratic hand (or even from his spontaneity ) in a couple of phrases. But with the whole picture in view and the spirit of Mozart so vivid, what else could we ask? In any event, from his playing here you can either hear all the colours of an orhcestra or the sound that comes from another world, or both at the same time... I'm sure there are other qualities you can discover from Edwin Fischer pianism, if not , how come Andras Schiff would turn from Schnabel to Edwin Fischer and Alfred Brendel remain his faithful disciple decades afer he himself has been praised up to the sky?

I own two versions of these concerti and I find the EMI transfer too bright and too stiff. And the Appian (APR) sounds much better, both the piano and the orchestra. For the latter version, one would mistake it as a recording in early 50s and little adjustment is necessary for the enjoyment of the music.

The famous August 8th 1946 Salzburg Concert!
This invaluable and treasured historical register is a billions carats performance. Blithering spirits joined with this masterful artists that glorious evening, conducting from the piano the Vienna Philharmonic. Fisher in his 60 played this marvelous program with astonishing ?clat and radiant inspiration.

This is one of the very first surviving postwar recordings, that explains and widely justifies all the technical efforts that finally have allowed us to enjoy and evocate that overwhelming Concerto.

When you listen this CD, you will be in hypnotic state from the first bars; such interpretation level pitifully is missing. Mesmerizing and engaging rapture state where the joyfulness and innocence will invade your soul

The Concerto 25 is played with fascinating conviction and sumptuous lyricism. From the epic initial bars until this Operatic finale. The No. 22 to my mind was his favorite one: Perhaps nobody has been able to play this work with major sense of bliss than Fisher. And believe me when I tell you; I have tried with more than one hundred different versions. Forget about it; you will experience Fisher ?s playing has such superior coherence that hardly you will find in any other pianist.

Perhaps these wise words of him, extracted from the notes of that Concert may give us a best idea about him: " Mozart? s works should be approached free of prejudice: the musician should imitate neither the harpsichord nor the orchestra in the piano compositions, but instead should experience the music with imagination and feeling... Mozart is the touchstone of the heart...a noble human heart, full of infinite purity who speaks the divine language of the music..."

Historic, but it's not recommend to 'Mozartian'.
It's a Edwin Fischer's only recording conducted the Wiener Philharmoniker. In 1946 Salzburg Festival, Fischer was appeared at the Mozarteum. He performed and conducted Mozart's 22th, 25th Piano Concertos & 40th Symphony(7 August). Unfortunately, symphony was not recorded but concertos are survive. It was recorded by Rot-Weiss-Rot, a Broadcasting Station managed by occupying American. Fischer's interpretion is very energetic but too heavy(you heard 'strangely radical' orchestra sound like in the opening of 25th concerto and other phrases). It's a very unique 'romantic' approach in these classical works. But I'll not recommend to other 'likes purely Mozartian'. Recording condition is not so good, too. It's sound is very cloudy.