TEDD JOSELSON
Complete RCA Album Collection
RCA Red Seal 19075903272 (6 CDs) / ****1/2
Sony Classical has been systematically
releasing boxed sets of pianists who recorded on the RCA Victor and Columbia
Masterworks labels, from legends Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz to
their younger colleagues like Van Cliburn and John Browning. The collection has
now mined the archives of Belgian-American pianist Tedd Joselson, who had a
relative short but distinguished performing career from the 1970s until he
retired to Singapore in the late 1990s.
His recording debut in 1974, at 21 and
RCA’s then youngest exclusive pianist, was nothing short of miraculous.
Performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Prokofiev’s Second
Piano Concerto, with no less than The Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene
Ormandy, is comparable to what the likes of Lang Lang and Yuju Wang did in
their youths. The performances reveal neither hints of reticence nor nerves, as
if coming from a well-seasoned veteran.
Joselson was marketed as a Romantic
pianist, evidenced by the energetic but finely-honed readings of Liszt’s Sonata
in B minor, Chopin’s “Funeral March” Sonata and Mussorgsky’s Pictures
at an Exhibition. However, pride of place goes to the selection of five
sonatas by Russian 20th century giant Sergei Prokofiev (Nos.2, 6, 7,
8 and 9), where he finds a rare poetic sensibility amid often abrasive and
percussive pages.
The latest recording, of the Sixth Sonata (dating from
1979), has never been previously
released. The music never succumbs to raw or pummelling brute force, but glows
in a radiant new light. All the original cover designs and sleeve-notes have
been retained in this unusual find with a Singaporean connection.
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