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Peter Katin shines in Tchaikovsky's First Concerto
Plus a brilliant Concert Fantasia, in excellent late-1950s Decca stereo
This, the second in our series of stereo concerto recordings made in the late 1950s by Peter Katin for Decca and its subsidiaries, brings together his two orchestral Tchaikovsky releases. The Concert Fantasia derived from the same sessions with Boult which produced the Rachmaninov Concerto No. 1 in February 1958, and were issued in mono and stereo both in the UK and the USA at around the same time. The Concerto No. 1 however was initially destined only for the American market - credited originally to the New Symphony Orchestra of London, its UK reissue in the early 1970s gave the London Symphony as the orchestra, though it does not appear in the official discography of the orchestra. It is the only recording in the Decca catalogue credited to English composer and conductor Edric Cundell (1893-1961), whose name was mis-spelt "Kundell" on both Decca and Olympia re-issues, though the original Richmond issues were correct in this matter.
Spellings and questions over orchestras aside, these are both excellent recordings and, taken from near-mint 1970s Decca pressings, were very straightforward to transfer and restore barring a curious low-frequency tone which appeared intermittently in the Concert Fantasia. Indeed it is fair to say this is among the least interventionist remasters ever to appear on the
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TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23
New Symphony Orchestra of London*
conducted by Edric Cundell
Recording producer: Erik Smith Recording Engineer: Alan Reeve
Recorded 11 May, 1959 Kingsway Hall, London
*Although originally - and it now seems correctly - attributed to the New Symphony Orchestra of London in its US release, this recording was later wrongly listed by Decca as being by the London Symphony Orchestra. It has since been established that the LSO would have been most likely out of the country on the day of recording. -
TCHAIKOSVKY Concert Fantasia in G major, Op. 56
London Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
Recording producer: Ray Minshull Recording Engineer: Alan Reeve
Recorded 17-19 February, 1958 Kingsway Hall, London
Transfers from Decca LP SPA168
Peter Katin, piano
XR remastering by
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Peter Katin
Total duration: 61:07
Fanfare Review
Enthusiastically recommended
From the labs of
In reviews of other
Peter Katin (b.1930 in London) is no stranger to
Tchaikovsky; he teamed up for a second recording of the concerto with
John Pritchard and the London Philharmonic for Classics for Pleasure,
which, unfortunately, I haven’t heard. But with the current release,
For some reason, at 18:46, Katin’s first movement sounds slower than it actually is. The 1941 Vladimir Horowitz with Arturo Toscanini is more than a full minute faster at 17:42, but there are passages where the pianist sounds like he’s been zapped with a taser, so muscle-twitching is his playing. Katin is considerably faster than Van Cliburn, however, who, in his near-legendary RCA recording with Kirill Kondrashin, takes 20:38. And even the usually wound-up Martha Argerich with Charles Dutoit is a relaxed 21:08.
Katin’s reading sounds slower than it is, I think, because it’s not a performance that unduly emphasizes the virtuosic pyrotechnics of the piece. His view of the score, which seems to be shared by conductor Edric Cundell, is that of a classically balanced concerto in which soloist and orchestra are equal partners. As a result, superbly well played as it is, in Katin’s hands, the piano takes on a slightly more subdued or self-effacing role than it does in more explicitly exhibitionistic performances. I’m not saying this is a bad thing—we actually get to hear the orchestra rather more prominently than we do in some other recordings—but it’s apt to come across as a bit lower in voltage than the knock-’em-dead approach that has become virtually de rigeur thanks to contests like the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition and today’s pubescent players pumped up and primed to rout all rivals. I really like Katin’s way with the piece and this performance of it. The concerto emerges less fractured and frayed than it sometimes does, and it sounds musically the stronger for it.
In its day, Tchaikovsky’s Concert Fantasy was quite popular, though it followed a somewhat twisted path to its completion in 1884. Inspired by the playing of Liszt’s pupil Eugen d’Albert, who had been concertizing in Moscow, Tchaikovsky thought about writing another concerto. But he was working at the same time on his Third Orchestral Suite, and somehow the two compositions ended up exchanging bodily fluids, so to speak. What was to have been the first movement of the suite, Contrastes, became the second movement of the Fantasy. Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky also wrote an alternative ending for the Fantasy’s first movement, which can be heard on a separate track in Jerome Lowenthal’s recent Bridge recording. Between the composer’s Concert Fantasy and his Third Piano Concerto it’s a tossup as to which is the bigger white elephant in the room.
Let me conclude by saying that not only has
Jerry Dubins
This article originally appeared in Issue 35:1 (Sept/Oct 2011) of Fanfare Magazine.