PIANO LIBRARY (YELLOW BOX)
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON EDITION
DG Eloquence 484 3089 (22 CDs)
During the early 1980s, when I was building a library of recordings on vinyl (those were the days before compact disc), I chanced across a selection of piano recital albums issued by Deutsche Grammophon under the Concours series. These were priced a few dollars lower than the premium series (featuring the famous likes of Pollini, Argerich and Barenboim), comprising recitals by young pianists who had been winners in recent international piano competitions.
None of their names were known to me, but I took a chance on one such album by Boris Bloch from the Soviet Union, who had won the 1977 Busoni Competition in Bolzano.
His unusual programme included Beethoven’s short and humourous Sonata in F major (Op.10 No.2), several Rachmaninov Etudes-Tableaux, Rachmaninov’s Lilacs and Vocalise (as transcribed by the uncredited Zoltan Kocsis), Busoni’s Turandots Frauengemach (the best transcription ever of Greensleeves) and the Liszt-Busoni Fantasy on Two Motifs from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. The then-unfamiliar music and virtuoso playing simply blew my mind, and I became determined to purchase several more from the series.
Eight such albums, hitherto unavailable on CD, have been reissued by the Eloquence label of Universal Australia as part of a 22-disc boxset titled Piano Library (Deutsche Grammophon Edition). I just prefer to call it the Yellow Box, to distinguish it from the 21-CD Blue Box also issued at the same time. Listening to these recordings were a walk down memory lane, seeing old names (many of whom have been lost through time), admiring original album covers and savouring performances which honestly do stand the test of time.
Who were the other pianists? Another LP I had bought was devoted to the Cuba-born Jorge Luis Prats, prizewinner at the Marguerite Long Competition. His more standard competition-fare programme saw excellent performances of Beethoven’s late Sonata in A major (Op.101), Schumann’s Toccata (Op.7) and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit. I did not own the Argerich recording then, but Prats was as good as it gets.
Another LP in my collection was that of the American pianist David Lively (winner of the Dino Ciani Prize of La Scala, Milan in 1977) who later settled in France. His very attractive dance-themed programme coupled Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin with Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, Tango and Ragtime. For some unknown reason, this box-set has omitted Munich’s ARD Competition laureate Hans-Christian Wille’s disc of Mussorgsky, Ravel and Ginastera.
Still actively performing today is the German Alexander Lonquich (prizewinner at the 1976 Casagrande Competition in Terni, Italy), the youngest pianist in the boxset, represented by Schoenberg’s Three Pieces (Op.11) and Schubert’s Sonata in A minor (D.845). While the atonality of Schoenberg is soft-edged, the contrasts presented are stark.
The Pole Ewa Poblocka (finalist at the 1980 Chopin Competition, the edition of Pogorelich infamy) showed she was not just a Chopin player, displaying width and breadth in both books of Debussy’s Images and J.S.Bach’s Aria Variata. A superb Chopin Scherzo No.1 (Op.20) was included for good measure.
The Soviet Mikhail Faermann (from Moldova) was the first prizewinner of the 1975 Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition, and showed his considerable chops in Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata and Brahms’ Paganini Variations, with typical Russian flair for technical exactitude. He defected to Belgium in 1978, but strangely never made a further recording after this.
Some of the featured pianists have since passed on, including the South African Steven de Groote (1953-1989), winner of the 1977 Van Cliburn Competition, who died of delayed complications from injuries sustained in a self-piloted plane crash. His patrician programme paired Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques (Op.13, without posthumous variations) with Beethoven’s Eroica Variations (Op.35), a very satisfying listen all round.
The late Brazilian pianist Diana Kacso (1953-2022), 2nd prizewinner to Michel Dalberto at the 1978 Leeds Competition, is represented by a strong and characterful Liszt Sonata in B minor, matched by an equally epic Chopin Polonaise-Fantasy (Op.61) and Etude in A flat major (Op.10 No.10) as encore. I did not buy the original LP as it split the Liszt sonata over two sides but am glad to have finally caught it on CD.
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| Youri Egorov |
The Dutch-Soviet pianist Youri Egorov (1954-1988), prizewinner at the 1975 Queen Elisabeth Competition, tragically died of AIDs in the Netherlands at the height of a fast-rising career. His Schumann Carnaval, not issued as part of the Concours series but a strong fill-up for the Faermann album, serves as a loving memory of what could have been.
Continued in Part 2:
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