Cheap Piano Concertos (Music) (Grieg, Chopin, Lipatti, Galliera, Ackermann) Price

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Customer Reviews of Piano Concertos

A master musician who passed too young
Dinu Lipatti was on his way to becoming one of the finest pianist of his generation. Unfortunately he died from leukemia when in his early thirties. The very brief career and subsequent limited discography is all that remains of this brilliant pianist. We are left with only one version of the Grieg piano concerto with the London Philharmonia. This perfomance as with the other on this disc is so passionate from the opening chords of the Grieg, I found myself incredibly drawn into this performance. There are other discs that combine the Grieg with Chopin or Schumann's piano concerto, but it is basically the same recording. Lipatti has such command of the piano, I really believe this is one of the definitve performances of the Grieg. But one problem makes this disc so hard to listen to.
This is a mono recording, abosultely horrible sound quality. I am not too sure if it could have been remastered into anything better, if it had been recorded in stereo, yes. But mono recordings are like listening to old AM radio from the seventies. You cannot hear the subtle nuances within the orchestra, in fact the whole orchestra sounds like it's playing in a cave. And Lipatti himself sounds like someone talking with their hand over their mouth, like a person sounds on a speakerphone. It's a problem that makes the recording very hard to listen too. I am not sorry I bought it, but I did buy the remastered version of Rubenstein's as well, sound quality much better. I have old recordings of Heifitz that were remastered from the fifties and you can tell the recording is that old, however you can still listen to them because they were remastered from stereo. But mono-- forget it. If you can get past that problem, and it's hard to do in this day and age when sound is so much more perfect and advanced than fifty years ago, then you can really love this recording. Otherwise find an old LP of this in a used record store and play it through the best EQ stereo you have, you won't be disappointed. I'm giving it 3 stars for the sound quality. The performance is first rate.