Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Emil Gilels' Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 Reconsidered

Transcript

Emil Gilels' Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 Reconsidered · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

• 0:08
  This is Jed Disler, and welcome to The Piano
• 0:12
  Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
• 0:16
  Back in our first season, I talked about Van
• 0:20
  Cliburn's best -selling 1958 recording of the
• 0:24
  Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, and one of
• 0:28
  the jury members... in the Tchaikovsky competition
• 0:31
  where Van Cliburn won first prize was the great
• 0:36
  pianist Emil Gielels. Now Gielels had recorded
• 0:40
  the Tchaikovsky for RCA Victor just a few years
• 0:43
  before Cliburn, but of course Cliburn made big
• 0:47
  headlines. with his Tchaikovsky performance and
• 0:51
  winning the first prize. And he became an overnight
• 0:54
  sensation. So, of course, RCA Victor had to snap
• 0:57
  him up under contract. And consequently, the
• 1:01
  Gilels recording was kind of left by the wayside.
• 1:05
  Or was it? To be sure, the Clyburn recording
• 1:09
  became a million seller. But the Gilels recording...
• 1:14
  remained in high esteem among collectors and
• 1:18
  pianophiles. Anyway, when I did this podcast,
• 1:21
  I got several comments from people mentioning
• 1:24
  the Gilels recording, and I was asked what I
• 1:27
  thought about it. And it had been quite a while
• 1:31
  since I had heard it. I remember that I had to
• 1:34
  reacquaint myself with the recording when I wrote
• 1:37
  the booklet notes to the Gilels Complete RCA
• 1:41
  Victor recordings and Columbia recordings box
• 1:44
  set that Sony BMG brought out a few years ago.
• 1:48
  I'm sure that box set has long disappeared. Gilels
• 1:52
  had a long relationship with this concerto. There's
• 1:55
  even an excerpt from his performance. from the
• 1:58
  1938 Queen Elizabeth competition in Belgium,
• 2:02
  where he won first prize. Quite a few live performances
• 2:07
  of the Tchaikovsky with Gilels, given between
• 2:11
  1947 and 1982, survive, and I will be the first
• 2:16
  one to admit that I have not heard all of them.
• 2:20
  For shame, I should know all of them, right?
• 2:23
  Well, I haven't heard all of them, but I thought
• 2:26
  that... Maybe for this talk, I can consider three
• 2:30
  commercial releases. The aforementioned 1955
• 2:34
  studio recording with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago
• 2:38
  Symphony, and then the 1972 recording Guilel's
• 2:44
  made with Lauren Mazel and the New Philharmonia
• 2:47
  Orchestra. And that was part of a cycle containing
• 2:50
  all three Tchaikovsky concertos. And then there
• 2:54
  was the live performance from September 14, 1979
• 2:59
  that was part of the opening night gala concert
• 3:03
  for the New York Philharmonic's 1979 -80 season
• 3:08
  with the orchestra's music director Zubin Mehta
• 3:11
  conducting. And that concert was offered as a
• 3:16
  radio and television simulcast, and it came out
• 3:20
  on LP as one of the CBS label's first digitally
• 3:24
  recorded releases. Obviously, the LP represented
• 3:29
  an edited version where little mistakes and imbalances
• 3:33
  got fixed, which is quite legitimate in my opinion.
• 3:37
  When I did the Clyburn Tchaikovsky podcast, I
• 3:41
  was asked about my opinion of the Gilels -Reiner
• 3:44
  recording. And the most obvious thing is that
• 3:48
  Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony blow the
• 3:51
  pickup orchestra on the Clyburn recording way
• 3:55
  out of the water. And the steel -toned assurance
• 3:59
  of Guillel's broken octaves and chord playing
• 4:03
  is so different from Clyburn's lyrical warmth
• 4:07
  and lyrical attitude. My late friend Harris Goldsmith
• 4:12
  often described Gilil's fortes in his loud passages
• 4:16
  as being quote -unquote bloodless, and his soft
• 4:21
  playing being pallid. Now, there's a kernel of
• 4:24
  truth to that, but Gilil's sheer power and projection,
• 4:29
  I think, have amazing authority in this recording.
• 4:32
  Now, you can argue that he gets some of the accents
• 4:36
  wrong in that famous first movement sequence.
• 4:41
  and I'm getting the accents wrong. But that's
• 4:44
  something he always did. And, you know, it really
• 4:47
  doesn't bother me so much as it bothered Harris
• 4:50
  Goldsmith. But I used to have a bee in my bonnet
• 4:53
  about that passage when I was a younger and more
• 4:56
  picky record reviewer than I am now. I also would
• 5:01
  like a little more dynamic shading than Gilel
• 5:05
  sometimes is willing to concede. But he does
• 5:08
  offer more inner voices and lyrical passages
• 5:11
  than I had given him credit for in the past.
• 5:16
  And just the fact that he keeps up with Fritz
• 5:19
  Reiner's unrelenting, brisk, basic tempo in the
• 5:22
  finale may be sufficient recommendation for this
• 5:26
  recording. So whatever it may lack in lyrical
• 5:30
  poetry, the interpretation has a lot of muscle
• 5:33
  and a lot of backbone and genuine musical excitement
• 5:38
  as well as physical excitement. And I enjoyed
• 5:41
  rehearing it a lot. Interpretatively speaking,
• 5:45
  The 1972 remake with Lauren Moselle and the New
• 5:49
  Philharmonia is similar, although you don't get
• 5:53
  the alive and really singing and stinging qualities
• 5:59
  of Rainer's Chicago Symphony in Moselle's virtuosic
• 6:05
  yet. sometimes rather machine -like orchestral
• 6:08
  framework. If you compare Mazel's quick downward
• 6:12
  runs and the strings and woodwinds in the finale
• 6:15
  to what Reiner does, I think you'll hear what
• 6:18
  I mean. But at least now the finale doesn't go
• 6:21
  at such a breakneck tempo. Also, Gilels modifies
• 6:25
  his earlier tendency to slam on the pedal during
• 6:29
  the big octave outbursts. Going forward a few
• 6:33
  years to September 1979 and the New York Philharmonic
• 6:37
  Pension Fund concert, Gilels is still playing
• 6:41
  at full capacity, although he does use a little
• 6:44
  more rubato than before, which I like. And it's
• 6:48
  to the music's advantage, especially in the introspective
• 6:52
  first movement solo and throughout the second
• 6:55
  movement. And the finale is... exciting without
• 7:00
  being frantic. But this early digital production,
• 7:04
  I think, is sonically strident, and loud passages,
• 7:08
  especially in the piano, have this harsh kind
• 7:12
  of metallic patina. And while Zubin Mehta is
• 7:17
  as experienced and supportive as an accompanist
• 7:21
  as you can get, you do hear the New York Philharmonic.
• 7:25
  at much better advantage and with cleaner playing
• 7:28
  all around in their earlier commercial recordings
• 7:32
  of the Tchaikovsky under Leonard Bernstein with
• 7:35
  Andre Watts and also believe it or not, in the
• 7:39
  Kurt Mazur recording with Elizabeth Leon Skaya
• 7:43
  as the soloist. I think in that recording, the
• 7:46
  orchestra part is much more interesting than
• 7:48
  the piano part. And of course, there is that
• 7:52
  totally insane George Sell, New York Philharmonic,
• 7:56
  Vladimir Horowitz, 1953 broadcast from New York.
• 8:01
  So... In the end, although each of these three
• 8:05
  Gilels, Tchaikovsky first concerto recordings,
• 8:09
  have salient virtues, obviously, I still gravitate
• 8:14
  more to the first one with Fritz Reiner for its
• 8:18
  orchestral distinction, and I think it has Gilel's
• 8:22
  freshest playing of the three. And speaking of
• 8:26
  Lauren Moselle's accompaniment, I think he actually
• 8:29
  gives a more involving and committed account
• 8:32
  of the orchestral part in his 1963 recording
• 8:36
  with the London Symphony Orchestra on Deco featuring
• 8:40
  Vladimir Ashkenazi as soloist. And that's a really
• 8:45
  fabulous recording. And it's interesting because
• 8:48
  Ashkenazi didn't particularly care for that concerto,
• 8:51
  but this is a really, really excellent recording.
• 8:54
  So, would I put Gilels and Reiner and Tchaikovsky
• 8:59
  at the top of my piano concerto number one list?
• 9:02
  Well, maybe I'd put it in my top ten. but my
• 9:06
  top 10 is a topic for another podcast episode.
• 9:10
  This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening
• 9:13
  to The Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide
• 9:16
  to piano recordings. Thank you for listening,
• 9:19
  and I look forward to being with you for our
• 9:22
  next episode.