Disc Details
Earl Wild: Paderewski / Scharwenka
Disc.Image
$ 22
Disc.Contnets
Ivory Classics CD-77003
Earl Wild: Paderewski / Scharwenka
-- DISC 1 --
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941):
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 17
- [1-02] 1st Mvt.: Allegro 15:35 ('70)
- [1-03] 2nd Mvt.: Romanza 09:15 ('70)
- [1-04] 3rd Mvt.: Allegro motto vivace 07:29 ('70)
piano: Earl Wild
orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
conductor: Arthur Fiedler
-- DISC 2 --
Franz Xaver Scharwenka (1850-1924):
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 32
- [2-01] 1st Mvt.: Allegro patetico 10:24 ('69)
- [2-02] 2nd Mvt.: Scherzo: Allegro assai 07:00 ('69)
- [2-03] 3rd Mvt.: Allegro non tanto 10:35 ('69)
piano: Earl Wild
orchestra: Boston Symphony Orchestra
conductor: Erich Leinsdorf
Piano: Earl Wild
[1-02] - [1-05]
Recorded September 6, 1970,
Barking Town Hall, London, England
Recording Engineer: Robert Auger
Steinway Piano
[2-01] - [2-03]
Recorded January 20, 1969,
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
Producer: Peter Delheim
Engineer: Bernard Keville
Baldwin Piano
Remastering Producer: Michael Rolland Davis
Remastering Engineer: Ed Thompson
Earl Wild's famous ground breaking 1970 recording of the Paderewski Concerto Op. 17 with Arthur Fiedler and the LSO is being re-released in a High-Resolution remastering by Ivory Classics. The double CD also includes a spectacular performance of Paderewski's lively Fantaisie Polonaise for piano and orchestra Op. 19 and his Theme and Variations Op. 16, No. 3 for solo piano On disc two is the equally famous 1969 recording of the Scharwenka Concerto No. 1 Op. 32 with Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony along with the Polish Dance Op. 3, No. 1 for solo piano. (ADD)
Disc.Reviews
The concerto is a period piece – a bravura work in the late 19th-century rhetoric...one can have fun tracing the various composers who play a part in this work. Greig is there, and Tchaikovsky, and Liszt and Schumann, and Chopin, and Anton Rubinstein, and Saint- Saëns. Toward the end of the last movement there is a theme that prefigures Rachmaninoff and the “Warsaw” Concerto, which is something of a feat considering that Scharwenka’s was composed in 1877....It is a wing-ding of a romp, one in which the pianist starts with a great splurge and scarcely removes his hands from the keys for the next half hour. It has pretty melodies, and it has a fiendishly difficult solo part....Period composers do reflect their age, and Scharwenka did, completely. It was a comfortable age, an age when the virtuoso was king, an age where sentiment ruled....And so the Scharwenka B flat minor Concerto was a charming, lightweight and exhibitionistic work....the way Mr. Wild played it was actually startling. It was sheer control all the way through with a feathery touch, minimum pedal and absolute clear articulation....Mr. Wild played it like a romantic hero of the keyboard, and he had a fine accompaniment from Mr. Leinsdorf.
Harold C. Schonberg, The New York Times, Dec. 1968
Earl Wild plays...with the flash and glitter and the sense of indomitable panache that would surely have pleased the composer, and he is exuberantly accompanied by Fiedler and the LSO.
Gramophone
