Track Listing

1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Allegro assai

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #677075 in Music
• Released on: 2000-06-27
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Amazon.com
Another valuable release from APR that sheds new light on Barbirolli's ill-fated stint as Toscanini's successor at the New York Philharmonic and gives well-deserved attention to the now-neglected French pianist Robert Casadesus. On the evidence here, Barbirolli's leadership in New York produced alert, incisive orchestral playing, and Casadesus in concert was a more dynamic pianist than in the studio. He later recorded the Mozart with George Szell and the Franck with Eugene Ormandy. They're more polished than these live 1930s concert recordings and in excellent stereo sound, so most will prefer them. But historical performance buffs and the pianist's fans will want this disc, where he plays with more zest. He's still a keyboard aristocrat, but he's more unbuttoned "live," lending near-raucous humor to the Weber and power to the Franck. Casadesus was a great Mozart pianist and this Concerto is done to perfection. Bryan Crimp's transfers miraculously retrieve full, colorful piano tone from the raw originals, but they couldn't eliminate occasional dropouts and distortion. They're worth listening past. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews

Bravo, Maestro!
The admirable artistic level achieved by Casadesus seems to be far to be formally analyzed. Maybe because of he was a XIX player, with kind character, totally focused in his art. His repertoire was extremely reduced, but he possessed an absolute domain of expression. He will be reminded as one notable pianist by Chopin notable coloring Chopin, his egregious Beethoven First Piano Concerto, his refulgent and crystalline Mozart, Franck 's Variations.

He was specially preferred for conductors as Bernstein, Toscanini, Rodzinki, Mitropulus and Szell, famed conductors with notable stylistic differences between them who felt in Casadesus the aristocratic sound of the piano; an aspect that has been relegated to a third concern in the most of the actual piano players. It would seem the homogeneity must prevail before the singularity, and the technique must be achieved as the maxim priority. If not try to distinguish among two well known piano players (whose names I won' t reveal by obvious reasons) and compare by yourself. This abominable tendency in search of criterion unification has murdered Dionysian aspect over Apollonian, being the music and the new listeners the victims of such narrow vision.