What a lovely set of Beethoven Piano Concertos this is, Philips don't make things like this anymore, these one inch 'fatbox' sets are the real biz, and also Arrau is no more, but thanks to recordings like this he lives on, of course the Fifth Piano Concerto is my favourite, but on this listen i was wowed by the Fourth, it gets more beautiful every time i listen to it, when i first got to know Beethoven's Piano Concertos, the Fifth and Third quickly established themselves as one and two, but over a long period of time, the Fourth has muscled alongside the Third, i found the Fourth originally sounded dour and dark, and the Third sweet and light, but the key signatures say things the other way around, the Third is in C Minor, while the Fourth is in the bright key of G Major, and i just love the revolutionary [for its time] way that it starts with solo piano, turning Mozart's ideas on his head, this was a great experience today.
Claudio Arrau is from Chile [1903-1991], a real old school debonair of the piano, he emigrated to the United States in 1941, he has recorded these Concertos three times, and this i take it is his last, this work was recorded in 1984, on the front cover [photo by Christian Steiner], Arrau is seated facing away from the piano, dark background, the lettering in white symmetrically arranged with nice underlining's, a nice visual product.
The slow movement is the one that sounds dour and crawls along at a snails pace, it comes in stops and starts, the weakest movement of the three, and yet on this hearing i was strangely entranced by it, it basically starts off as a dialogue between orchestra and piano, taking turns making statements, there's an introspective solo by the piano [3:05+], the bit i liked the best is the ending, when the orchestra come back in [5:05+], so gently, a nice shimmering hum, well in re-listening to this, i can't quite put my finger on why it was so entrancing!, that's the chimerical nature of music, Arrau takes it slow and sure, nice to go over it again.
Here's Claudio Arrau playing Piano Concerto 4 on YouTube, with Leonard bernstein conducting, the second movement starts at 21:15.
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