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BUZZ More than a half-century has passed since the American pianist William Kapell (1922- 1953) died after an all too brief career, in a freak plane crash on California's King's Mountain, only a few minutes before he was to touch down in San Francisco. His memory is still cherished and interest in his artistry was recently revived by the release of a number of amateur off-the-air recordings of performances from his Australian tour. By popular demand Music & Arts is re-issuing this 1997 album, of which Tim Page, Kapell's biographer, wrote: "[The Prokofiev Third] is probably the finest performance of the concerto that Kapell left us and it is much preferable, in its spontaneity and poetic fury, to the curiously tame RCA Victor recording he had made a month earlier with Antal Dorati and the Dallas Symphony... The Brahms concerto is the last major work with orchestra that Kapell played in New York, slightly more than six months before he died. Here again, we have the Philharmonic (this time under Dmitri Mitropoulos on April 12, 1953) recorded in the luscious acoustics of the old Carnegie Hall. While there is still a good deal of brilliance in the playing - listen to the ferocity with which Kapell attacks passages of exposed octaves - there is also a welcome poise and serenity in softer passages and an abiding sense of formal structure throughout." |
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BUZZ Brian Crimp writes in his note: "Ginette Neveu (1919-49) was cruelly snatched from a disbelieving world decades ago, yet her name still elicits deep respect and admiration not only from those fortunate enough to have heard her in the flesh but also from a legion of admirers who came to know a supreme artist via only her recordings. Neveu's true international career was to last hardly five years, yet at the time of her death at thirty she had already won for herself an indelible, illustrious position in the annals of violin playing." "Half a century later the vividness and fiery purity of her playing still astonish and inspire." "Ginette Neveu was only 29 when she died in a plane crash in the Azores in1949. But even then she was already celebrated for her exquisite music making, in which immeasurable passion was informed by unparalleled insight. Her transcendent reading of Chausson's heady Poème is longing personified, while her performance of the Brahms concerto, especially the slow movement, couldn't be more heartbreaking. Her Beethoven is perfection. This great violinist moves adroitly into Ravel's sexy Tzigane with sultry panache." "Some of the most accurate, full-toned and sensitive performances I have heard of these works...sheer magic." |
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BUZZ Writes critic William H. Youngren in his liner notes: "When I reflect on what was unique about Knappertsbusch's work, Wagner's tempo direction 'Lebhaft, doch gewichtig' [lively, yet weighty] comes to mind. At his best, Knappertsbusch was able to create impressive masses of sound that moved, even at slow tempos, with an inner rhythmic life that propelled the drama forward yet also, even at fast tempos, seemed never to rush along unduly, seemed always to leave the listener time to experience everything as it went by." "The cast would be hard to better at any time, let alone now... Knappertsbusch's rare sense of Wagner's scoring, as well as his mastery of the formal architecture, are splendidly apparent." "[Knappertsbusch] was certainly among the greatest Wagnerian conductors of the last hundred years. Listen to his Immolation Scene with Astrid Varnay...and you hear Brunnhilde's apotheosis unfold with an unsurpassed sense of inevitability." "The Knappertsbusch [set] is a very special event, at its best-and it's often at its best-unrivalled by any of these other readings." "Except for the final scene of SIEGFRIED, more exciting in 1958, this is the most urgent of Hans Knappertsbusch's four impressive Bayreuth Rings..." |
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BUZZ Acclaimed by TIME magazine and all major trade journals when first released on LPs, this set has been a Music & Arts international bestseller since its CD release in 1990. It has been unavailable during most of 2008 and has just been reissued. It will make an ideal Christmas present. "Frank was a Schnabel pupil and sounds it, not by imitation but by a rhythmically sprung approach in the faster movements, depth of feeling in the slower ones and a binding intelligence that covers all 32 masterpieces." "...This is one of the most rewarding Beethoven cycles on the market, deserving of equal consideration alongside the reference versions." "...Frank is an unfailingly intelligent musician, and he serves up fresh-sounding but respectful performances that are rhythmically vital (but never edgy), formally lucid (but never glaring), and scrupulous (but never fussy) in their handling of textural, motivic, and dynamic detail (especially at the quiet end)....Warmly recommended." ". . .Frank, throughout these sonatas, is never extreme, never outlandish, and yet manages to express straightforward and unforced excitement where it counts most, . . .red-blooded a player as might be desired, Frank also has a direct elegance and polish that makes him a more distinctly Viennese musician than the sometimes brusque-sounding Schnabel . . .Among more recent performances in good sound, Frank leads the field alongside Goode, and wears particularly well with repeated listening. Although Frank is still active concertising both solo and in chamber recitals with his daughter, the gifted violinist Pamela Frank, few of his many recordings are in print, making this Music & Arts item all the more precious." |
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© 2012 Music & Arts Programs of America. All rights reserved.
CD-0990(1) WILLIAM KAPELL IN PERFORMANCE: BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op.15 in d with Phillharmonic-Symphony Orchestra cond. Dimitri Mitropoullos (12 April 1953, New York). PROKOFIEV: Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26, in C with Phillharmonic-Symphony Orchestra cond. Leopold Stokowski (5 March 1949, New York). Release authorized by the Kapell Estate. Originally released in 1997; new digital restoration in 2008.Total time: 72:08. AAD UPC# 0-17685-09902-1
CD-0837(2) GINETTE NEVEU- 1949 CONCERT PERFORMANCES: Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 61 Southwest German Radio Orchestra (Baden-Baden), cond. Hans Rosbaud (rec. Sept. 1949); Ravel: Tzigane for Violin and Orchestra Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, cond. Charles Munch (rec. 2 Jan. 1949); Brahms: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77 The Hague Residentie Orchestra, cond. Antal Dorati (rec. 10 June 1949); Chausson: Poème for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 25 Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, cond. Charles Munch (rec. 2 Jan. 1949). 2 CDs; orig. released in 1994; new digital restoration in 2008. AAD; 54:50 & 57:08 UPC# 0-17685-083723.
CD-4009(13) KNAPPERTSBUSCH'S 1956 BAYREUTH RING- AT LAST, IN SUPERB FIDELITY! Wagner: Der Ring Des Nibelungen, Hans Hotter as Wotan, Wolfgang Windgassen as Siegmund and Siegfried, Josef Greindl as Hunding, Gré Brouwenstijn as Sieglinde, and Astrid Varnay as Brünnhilde. With the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch (1956). (ADD) UPC #0-17685-40092-6. SPECIAL: 13 CDs in slipcase (not available separately) priced as 6!
CD-4640(10) BEETHOVEN: THE COMPLETE PIANO SONATAS. Claude Frank, Piano. Reissue of the celebrated 1971 RCA LP set. Digitally refurbished. First CD release in 1990 (ADD) UPC #0-17685-46402-7. Special! 10 CDs for the price of 5. CDs not available separately.