Orfeo 40th Anniversary - Legendary Pianists
When the ORFEO label was established in Munich 40 years ago, few would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player in the classical music market. One of the label’s priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and, since the mid 1980s, the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory for discovering and nurturing young artists. This Legendary Pianists 10-disc boxed set continues the series marking ORFEO’s 40th anniversary and features nine pianists in historical and modern recordings dating from the 1950s to the 2000s.
REVIEW:
This edition should be quite intriguing to collectors who surely will find a set of names quite different from what they might have chosen. It does not claim to be definitive; a collection, not the collection. There are ten CDs in the box featuring nine artists recorded live or recorded for broadcast, giving a sense of hearing an actual performance that contributes a heightened sense of you-are-there. Repertoire consists of mainly concertos from Bach to Brahms, via Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. Also, a handful of variations, etc. This is a most attractive collection of pure pleasure.
-- The Whole Note
But for Kempff at his most unbridled you need to hear 1956 WDR Cologne radio recordings of Beethoven’s Op 111 and Schumann’s Fantasie, where bass chords are augmented and the sense of uplift is so acute that you could as well be listening to Schnabel, Cortot, or Fischer live. The disc is one of 10 in Orfeo’s Legendary Pianists, which opens with the player Furtwängler described as ‘the troubadour of the piano’, Géza Anda, who fits that description like a glove in Beethoven’s First Concerto recorded in Munich under Rafael Kubelík, whereas Brahms’s Second Concerto with the same artists fans the flames with consistent intensity, the second movement especially. In the same collection, Gulda plays concertos by Beethoven and Schumann, a rather brittle-sounding Oleg Maisenberg is compelling in Schubert (including the Wanderer Fantasy), Konstantin Lifschitz brings a Gouldian tautness to the seven Bach keyboard concertos (greatly extending the cadenza in BWV1052’s finale), Carl Seemann is characteristically considered in Mozart’s Concertos K449 and 503, Gerhard Oppitz plays Brahms’s Third Sonata (the second movement being significantly broader than on his RCA recording) and we’re given the Third and Fifth Beethoven Concertos from the cycle that Rudolf Serkin and Kubelík recorded in 1977, a much-underrated set.
-- Gramophone
Product Description:
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Release Date: October 09, 2020
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UPC: 4011790200712
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Catalog Number: ORF-C200071
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Label: Orfeo
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Number of Discs: 10
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Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann
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Conductor: Rafael Kubelik, Joseph Keilberth, Wilfried Boettcher, Leopold Hager
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Orchestra/Ensemble: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, NDR Symphony Orchestra
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Performer: Bruno-Leonardo Gelber, Konstantin Lifschitz, Géza Anda, Oleg Maisenberg, Carl Seemann, Rudolf Serkin, Wilhelm Kempff, Friedrich Gulda, Gerhard Oppitz
Works:
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Concerto for Piano and Orchetra No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Ensemble: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Géza Anda (PIano)
Conductor: Rafael Kubelik
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Concerto for Piano and Orchetra No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 83
Composer: Johannes Brahms
Ensemble: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Géza Anda (PIano)
Conductor: Rafael Kubelik
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Variations (15) and Fugue on an Original Theme in E-Flat Major, Op. 35, "Eroica Variations"
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Performer: Bruno-Leonardo Gelber (Piano)
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Easy Variations (6) on an Original Theme in G Major, WoO 77
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Performer: Bruno-Leonardo Gelber (Piano)
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Variations (32) in C Minor, WoO 80
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Performer: Bruno-Leonardo Gelber (Piano)
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Ensemble: Vienna Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Friedrich Gulda (Piano)
Conductor: Friedrich Gulda
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor, Op. 54
Composer: Robert Schumann
Ensemble: Vienna Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Friedrich Gulda (Piano)
Conductor: Joseph Keilberth
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Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17
Composer: Robert Schumann
Performer: Wilhelm Kempff (Piano)
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Sonata for Piano No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Performer: Wilhelm Kempff (Piano)
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Fantasy in C Major, Op. 15, D. 760, "Wandererfantasie"
Composer: Franz Schubert
Performer: Oleg Maisenberg (Piano)
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Sonata for Piano No. 14 in A Minor, Op. 143, D. 784
Composer: Franz Schubert
Performer: Oleg Maisenberg (Piano)
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Concertos (7) for Keyboard and Orchestra, BWV 1052-1058
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
Ensemble: Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra
Performer: Konstantin Lifschitz (Piano)
Conductor: Konstantin Lifschitz
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 25 in C Major, K. 503
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ensemble: NDR Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Carl Seemann (Piano)
Conductor: Wilfried Boettcher
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 14 in E-Flat Major, K. 449
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ensemble: NDR Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Carl Seemann (Piano)
Conductor: Leopold Hager
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Sonata for Piano No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 5
Composer: Johannes Brahms
Performer: Gerhard Oppitz (Piano)
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Piano Pieces (4), Op. 119
Composer: Johannes Brahms
Performer: Gerhard Oppitz (Piano)
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Ensemble: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Rudolf Serkin (Piano)
Conductor: Rafael Kubelik
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73, "Emperor"
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Ensemble: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Rudolf Serkin (Piano)
Conductor: Rafael Kubelik