At the Concertgebouw [Live]

At the Concertgebouw [Live]

ASIN: B0000046T4

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
These are classic live recordings of Peterson's superb trio with guitarist Herb Ellis and bassist Ray Brown, though there's long been confusion about the source. Despite the original LP title, the first eight tunes actually came from a 1957 Jazz at the Philharmonic concert at Chicago's Civic Opera House. The final five tracks were originally issued on At the Opera House, an LP that Peterson's trio shared with the Modern Jazz Quartet. Those tracks, however, were actually recorded in Los Angeles's Shrine Auditorium. The confusion about venues hardly matters. These are first-rate documents of the group, a drummerless trio to which each member brought a focus on rhythmic essentials, from driving uptempos to the loping swing of "When Lights Are Low." Peterson's stylistic roots in Art Tatum are apparent from the start with "The Lady Is a Tramp," while Ellis's penchant for the blues shines even at the ferocious tempo of Bud Powell's "Budo." At its best, the group combines complex arrangements with a highly developed sense of interplay. It's especially apparent on the bop tunes here, like Clifford Brown's "Daahoud" and "Joy Spring," while Peterson's powerhouse playing comes through on "Bluesology." --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews:

Poised, Olympian Beethoven P Ctos from Derek Han, BerlinSO, Paul Freeman.......2006-06-04

Derek Han is a Julliard graduate of Chinese American legacy, who won both First Prize and the Gold Medal at the Athens International Piano Competition of 1977. Yawn. So what. Each year or two or three brings us a new crop of competition prize winners from somewhere. Each medallist gets the mandatory fifteen minutes of Andy Warhol fame, and then fades into the background blur of having to make a living as a working professional musician.

Except. This Derek Han still has quite a lot to offer. His way with the piano reminds me of famous forebears like Dinu Lipatti, Clara Haskil, and the French pianist, Robert Casadesus. Han's tone is always limpid and absolutely without any hardness or fuzz. A keyboard run always strings together a set of well-matched tonal pearls, fast or slow or in-between. This all sounds so effortless and easy that it cannot in fact be just that effortless and easy. The piano is, as Bartok taught us, as likely to sound like a pitched percussion instrument as not, unless you bend the physical mechanism of it to some other heart or will or musical spirit. By all historical accounts, this ability to make the piano do music, instead of letting music just do the piano - is near to the heart of what actually hearing Mozart or Beethoven play might have been. In that sense Derek Han is a born Mozartian, and of course here we are talking about Beethoven. Yet Mr. Han can dig into his keys when he needs to produce a real sforzando punctuation without losing his fundamentally physicality. Think gymnastics, particularly on the rings, not weight lifting. Mr. Han remains lithe and cool-headed and perfectly balanced in each and every musical movement. His sound is ever crystalline and refreshing. Think mineral spring water with natural carbonation.

Both concertos were recorded live in concert at the renowned Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Presumably the Berlin Symphony was visiting Amsterdam, with Paul Freeman conducting, and Derek Han as featured soloist. Lucky for us that these concert recordings were produced by engineer Judith Sherman. She does here what she always did do, which is to capture a real musical performance in a real venue with great presence, balance, and assurance in the recorded sound. There is nothing at all flashy or grandstanding in her way with a recording and its sound stage; but the more you listen, the more you will probably appreciate that she lets nothing happen that gets in the way of the music on any account.

The attentive audience in these live concerts was magically free of colds or influenzas. They allow themselves to be sonically invisible, except for a certain retrospective sense of rapt concentration that suddenly contributes to all that one has just heard, the moment their applause breaks. Only at the end of each concerto, then, will a listener probably remember that things were live, not studio-based. But remember that, live. To create and convey all of this high-level musical performance, right on the wing of the many moments where something goes wrong with the tapes running, simply could not have been easy. It is so good, so self-assured you will be tempted to take it quite for granted. Don't.

The members of the Berlin Symphony offer us a golden, darker-woods burnished, mellow aural personality that has real historic, old-world European glow. Over time their grasp of Beethoven's orchestral narrative, integral to the five piano concertos, wears very well in all departments of the orchestra, indeed. The more one listens, the better one appreciates that nobody is anywhere near to getting in Beethoven's way. The Berlin Symphony may be making a daily living, but they sound like they are still playing for love of the music.

Paul Freeman helms all of these musical talents by pulling his best musical transparency out of the performance hat. He knows every measure, and all the expressive indications, but he never lets anything come apart into separate pieces or get so wayward that it starts blinking like a roadside neon sign in the darkened night's classical chiascuro. Freeman's way with Beethoven always calls attention to Beethoven, not to Freeman.

The technical and musical raw materials especially come together in the reading of the fourth piano concerto. Han's fabulous touch, nothing blurred or distorted. The gravitas and glow of the Berlin Symphony's tonal personality. The way that Freeman joins the band, letting his skill and personality merge into the music instead of drawing all the music into his own egotistical posturing. What remains is the deep mystery that Beethoven wrote into this particular work. It stands, utterly unique, even in the history and sequence of the five Beethoven piano concertos: both famously simple, and complex as an ancient rite of mystical passage. Like Mozart's Magic Flute, something at the heart of the fourth seems to be trying to ennoble us and draw us into a larger intangible healthy purpose, ethical and spiritual and musical. At the time we listen we may not consciously and separately notice how we are bidden. Later, in retrospect, we may have to admit that much more than entertainment - even very high level entertainment - seems to have been the point.

Praising the fourth is not to say that the reading of the third concerto is lacking. Han's third concerto has all the focus and energy that it needs, and demonstrates yet again that Beethoven was intentionally traveling far in giant fairy tale steps wearing seven league boots, from where Mozart left off at his death. Beethovenian punch and vigor are not permitted to lay undue claims here, over structural harmonic thrust. Neither is melody sacrificed, though in Beethoven melody is always at the same time its own twin insofar as it constantly serve motivic and developmental purposes (even when melody is transfixing us with song).

Highly recommended. Check out the rest of the Beethoven piano concertos. Stars.

Beehoven: Symphony No. 3, "Eroica" (live at the Concertgebouw, November 1940)

Average customer rating:

Beehoven: Symphony No. 3, "Eroica" (live at the Concertgebouw, November 1940)

Manufacturer: Philips
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00000E34G

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Live Radio Recordings

Average customer rating:

Three-and-a-half stars ... All-around good but not essential
Really a wonderful collection - & well recorded performances

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Live Radio Recordings

Manufacturer: Nm Classics
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Ballets | Ballets & Dances | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

Modern & 20th Century | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Sacred & Religious | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

Modern & 20th Century | Historical Periods | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

German | Languages | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Russian | Languages | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Oratorios | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Requiems | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Classical | Box Sets | Stores | Music
ASIN: B00000K0P8
Release Date: 1999-10-15

Customer Reviews:

Three-and-a-half stars ... All-around good but not essential.......2003-03-02

I'm a big admirer of Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink. I think he is among the most consistent maestros today. But while this treasury of live performances, recorded for broadcast, is very fine, there's surprisingly little in here that's indispensible. It's all uniformly "good," but I don't think this would make it to my desert isle.

One of the interesting thing this set shows is that the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Haitink are a bit rougher in person than in the studio. (An English Horn solo in the Ravel Concerto was particularly gruff.) Some highlights: a soulful, dedicated Mozart 27th Piano Concerto with Clifford Curzon; a martial, mercurial Mahler 6th that, for some reason, still doesn't convince me; same with a DSCH 10th, which lacks gravity and is too fleeting at times, especially in the scherzo; a superb Stravinsky Threni; a wonderfully colored and cohesive Prokofiev 5th Concerto with Ashkenazy, and a very fine, well-organized Bruckner 7th that only lacks a scherzo with enough portent and bite. Some of the disappointments: a Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1 with Oistrakh where Haitink never really sounds idiomatic, though Oistrakh is superb; a good-but-not-great Bartok Second Violin Concerto with Stern; the aforementioned Ravel Concerto, where the soloist, Daniel Wayenberg, is excellent but where support is sloppy in spots.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the set, though, is the range of music presented here. Perhaps they did it on purpose, but the collection emphasizes music we don't normally associate with Haitink, such as much music by the Second Viennese School. He conducts it well, but Boulez and Bernstein do it better. Again, very good, but nothing definitive. I've heard Haitink in some really fine recordings and performances, but these, while certainly good, are not quite the cream of the cream. And there's so much great Haitink already out there that this set finds itself competing with other recordings by the same maestro. However, there is also a lot of unusual repertoire here, a strong selling point.

Really a wonderful collection - & well recorded performances.......2002-04-27

You might laugh, but I bought this to get a recording of Stravinsky's "Threni". It does have a whole disk dedicated to performances of various Stravinsky works and it is a very nice disk. But there are 13 MORE disks full of really choice LIVE performances! I am a fan of live music and recorded live music is the next best thing.

Go ahead and just carefully look at the range and variety of music and musicians offered here and you will quickly realize as I did (after I bought it) what a wonderful collection this is.

I know it will take some waiting to get this collection, and it isn't cheap, but it is very much worth the bother and the price.

Jazz Music:

Jazz Music

Jazz Music