Performer: Emil Gilels
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalogue: 4796288
Release: 2016
Size: 222 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 ‘Waldstein’
01. 1. Allegro con brio
02. 2. Introduzione (Adagio molto)
03. 3. Rondo (Allegretto moderato – Prestissimo)
04. Chopin: Variations on Mozart’s ‘La ci darem la mano’ in B flat major, Op. 2
05. Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 3 in A minor, Op. 28
Debussy: Images pour piano – Book 1
06. 1. Reflets dans l’eau
07. 2. Hommage à Rameau
08. 3. Mouvement
Prokofiev: Visions fugitives, Op. 22
09. 1. Lentamente
10. 3. Allegretto
11. 5. Molto giocoso
12. 11. Con vivacità
13. 10. Ridiculosamente
14. 17. Poetico
Ravel: Miroirs, 5 pieces for piano
15. 4. Alborada del gracioso
Stravinsky: Three Movements from Petrushka
16. 1. Danse russe
17. Bach: Prelude In E Minor, BWV 855a (Arranged And Transposed To B Minor)
In the early 1960s, with the first wave of Russian virtuosi continuing to make waves in the West, extraordinary recitals spread beyond the usual American concert centers of New York and Boston. This recording reproduces an Emil Gilels concert given in Seattle in December of 1964, and it captures the pianist’s tremendous energy and the energy of the audience’s response as well. The Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 (“Waldstein”) was one of Gilels’ trademarks. You might want this release just for the performance of that work alone, with its surging double-octave scales in the finale letting the audience know that it’s in for something special. There are many other highlights: Prokofiev that seems perfectly idiomatic, a stirring “Danse Russe” of Stravinsky (another Gilels trademark), a group of Debussy’s Images that is hardly conventional, but seems inexorably swept along by the whirlwind of the whole. Everything comes to rest with an Alexander Siloti arrangement of a Bach prelude. Gilels in the 1960s was not quite the household name that Sviatoslav Richter was, but, admired by Rachmaninov and directly connected to Prokofiev, he perhaps represented pure Russian tradition in a way that no other pianist of his time did. This Deutsche Grammophon release gives a good idea of his accomplishments. The sound certainly isn’t spectacular, but for 1964 its immediacy and clarity are reasonable.
Previously-unreleased recording of Emil Gilels, the 100th anniversary of whose birth falls October 2016, captured live in an acclaimed 1964 Seattle recital.
On 6 December 1964 the great Emil Gilels gave a tempestuously acclaimed recital at the Seattle Opera. The concert was recorded live for private purposes but with professional equipment. With the exception of a single work, this recital has never before been made available to the general public and is now being released for the first time!
Between 1955 and 1983 Emil Gilels toured North America twelve times. Unlike his Soviet colleague and rival Sviatoslav Richter, Gilels loved the US. “I first came here 22 years ago,” he said in 1977. “I lost here in the United States very much of my heart. You know, I left here a good portion of my life.” This certainly held true for his fifth tour, an arduous three months of recitals, concerto dates and recording sessions that began and ended on the East Coast. In between came four West Coast appearances – in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, as well as the present recital recorded in the Seattle Opera House on December 6, 1964 and released here for the first time.
As the concert unfolds, the give-and-take between the pianist’s inspiration and the public’s appreciation is palpable, boding well for future Seattle appearances. But it was not to be; Gilels would only return once more to the city, in 1979: yet another reason to treasure this previously unpublished document of one of the 20th century’s greatest pianists in a live concert – his preferred setting – and at the height of his powers.