Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Hommage a Artur Rubinstein - Mikhail Pletnev plays the 3rd Rachmaninov Piano Concerto at the National Philharmonic 07 12 2002

This was a concert held on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the death of the great Artur Rubinstein. The performance brought the great Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev to Warsaw to play Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto.

Szymanowski's 2nd Symphony was the first "mature" symphony written by the composer. Premiered on 7 April 1911 in Warsaw under the eminent Polish conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg, it was not well received. It was appreciated much better abroad, with favourable reception and reviews in Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna.
This is typical Szymanowski - at once grandiose, passionate and lyrical.

What more can be said about one of the greatest piano concertos in the repertoire? Only that the conductor and soloist seem not to be able to agree on a number of things even as they are playing.
Nevertheless, a record of a mature Mikhail Pletnev and the work has not (to my knowledge) been recorded by him in the studio for any label.

The set list: 
Karol Szymanowski - Symphony no. 2 in B flat major, op. 19 
Sergei Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto no. 3 in D minor, op. 30

The National Philharmonic Orchestra
Antoni Wit - conductor
Mikhail Pletnev - piano

1 comment:

Sandflyer said...

For visitors old and new:
This is the same concert I uploaded on this blog a while back. It took me some time to get back to restoring the blog after the powers that be fried the old links.

APE, individual files ~242 MB

http://hotfile.com/dl/153907146/3aac305/SR_KSz_AW_MP_OFN_07122002.zip.html