Emil Gilels plays Chopin
$18.00
Low Stock
add to cart
CHOPIN
Emil Gilels plays Chopin
Emil Gilels (piano)
[ Decca Australian Eloquence / CD ]
Release Date: Wednesday 20 July 2016
Should this item be out of stock at the time of your order, we would expect to be able to supply it to you within 2 - 4 weeks.
When Arthur Rubinstein first heard the fifteen-year-old Gilels perform in Odessa, he exclaimed 'By God, I can't describe it. If he comes to America, I might as well pack my bags and leave!'
'Serious without solemnity, profound without pomp, he was a citizen of the world,' wrote Jeremy Siepmann of Gilels. 'Like music itself, his art was all encompassing, embracing both aspiration and achievement, if not always in equal measure. […] He was inconsistent […] but the failures of a genius are more nourishing than the successes of most lesser artists. Even on his off-days, Gilels made you think. At his greatest, you could only marvel.'
These magnificent recordings of Chopin are testament to Gilels's all-encompassing artistry - one of his all-too-rare outings with this composer. As John Steane noted in Gramophone, '… there is not a bar that does not set one thinking about this music anew'.
"No pianist distils tone with a finer touch … than Gilels. […] We can hear luminous and illuminating polyphony everywhere in Gilels's Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann." Gramophone
"richly eloquent and beautiful' [Sonata No. 3] … 'The Polonaises combine warmth with sturdiness … The disc is exemplary in quality of recorded sound" (Gramophone)
"The Sonata is thoughtful and ruminative, seen through a powerful mind and wholly individual fingers, with some highly personal details, such as the gentle undulating accompaniment, like quietly tolling bells caressing the second group of the first movement, and there is a beautifully pensive and delicately coloured slow movement … there is not a bar that does not set one thinking about this music anew." (Gramophone)
Tracks:
Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58
Polonaise No. 3 in A major, Op. 40 No. 1 'Military'
Polonaise No. 4 in C minor, Op. 40, No. 2
Polonaise No. 6 in A flat major, Op. 53 'Héroïque'
Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23
