Economics Business Music Politics Altruism : February 2010

Rachmaninoff Piano No 3 in D minor Op 30

Sometime in Dec 2009 while I was on leave from work for almost a month, I was introduced to a new fellow HiFi fraternity while on one of my regular visits to HiFi wonderland. He was there to test out an equipment and the owner asked what he would like to listen to and he mentioned classical and a CD of Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No 3 was lying on the coffee table and he suggested why not try this as it is something he is familiar with. This was my second encounter with a HiFi fan that loved this piece and the other person actually brings a recording of this piece around HiFi shops as a reference sounding board. The shop owner introduced me to his customer as one that loves classical music and he said to me that surely I must have this piece as it is almost like staple food of classical music. I did not answer his question as Rachmaninoff was not on my list of favorite composers and I only vaguely remembers his signature Piano Concerto No 1. Not wanting to be embarrassed, I told myself that I must go find out more about this piece and do some serious listening.

To my pleasant surprise, I found that I have 2 full recordings of this piece and decided to start listening to it and at first, I must admit that I was of the opinion that this piece must be an acquired taste like durians; you either love it or hate it and there is no two ways about it. The piece fell off my listening priority for a few weeks and one late evening or shall I say wee hours of morning whilst I was in a contemplative moods, I turned on Apple IPod and was intending to listen to Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No 1 but accidentally swipe the click wheel too quickly and it landed me on his Piano Concerto no 3 and suddenly, the beginning motif seems to catch my attention and I listen on to all the 3 movements and it began to grew on me. It must not have been the superior sonics as I was listening miniature Altec Lansing speakers attached to my IPod and it was an old recording by famous pianist Van Cliburn and therefore it had to be music. Moreover, it was a live recording with a somewhat nosier audience or perhaps the sound engineer was lacking in skills in removing the audience noise from the recording. Some of my HiFi friends told me that there are basically two categories of HiFi fans, those that listen to the equipment against those that listen to the music. I try to strike a balance between the two and this is perhaps the reason I ended up with a decent size library of about 1400 classical CDs.

After listening to all 3 movements for a second time, I think I am beginning to like this piece like never before. The next day, I listened to the second recording I have by Zoltan Kocsis with San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the hand of Edo deWaart. This recording was slightly faster paced than Van Cliburn version and between the two, I preferred the latter one as it the tempo seems to jive better with the melody and more emotive as possible to Kocsis catch the 'A' train tempo.

Not long thereafter, during one of my online shopping, I chance upon a live recording of this piece by world renown Chinese pianist Lang Lang version of this piece and in it went to the basket and it arrived at my door step a few later thanks to the snow storm plaguing USA coupled with the Christmas season. I was pretty surprised as I expected the version by Lang Lang to be more exuberant than normal as with most of his pieces but he surprised me with a tempered playing style that was much closer Van Cliburn and I check my CD player to make sure that I had the right CD and it was correct.

A bit about the origin of the piece. As Dvorak has his symphony no 9 'New World' as he composed it in USA, there is some parallel between the two. Rachmaninoff was to have a grand tour of the about 30 cities in USA arranged for him and he wrote this piece specifically for the tour. However, due to sudden death of his USA concert tour sponsor and he thought that the deal was off but it was not to be the case as Rachmaninoff actually contracted with the company and not the dead person and he was obliged to full-fill the USA tour. He wrote most of the entire piece in continental Europe and finished it save for the cadenza. An ingenious Rachmaninoff prepared a cardboard to mirror the keys of the Piano and he wrote the cadenza silently so to speak while crossing the Atlantic to USA on ship that took days instead of hours by air now. On the opening night, he played his silently composed cadenza for this first time to much acclaim of the audience not knowing the background. He swore never to have such a close shave again.

This piece was to become a much loved and requested piece of music during the tour and also subsequently when he left Russia motherland for good for USA to escape the communist revolution taking place then. He lived his last days in USA and never got a chance to return back to Russia that he so loved.

For those of you that are keen, here are the details of the 3 CDs from which I have used to write this commentary:

1.Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No 3 Lang Lang-TELARC SACD-60582 (SACD)

2.Rachmaninoff/Prokofiev/Van Cliburn-LIVING STEREO 82876 67894 2 (SACD)

3.Rachmaninoff: Complete Works For Piano And Orchestra-Philips B00005O83Z

Have a good listen to this piece composed around the turn of 1900 and be patient and the bouquet would unfold slowly but surely onto you like all good wine and perfurme that takes time to mature and cannot be rushed.

Peter Lye aka lkypeter

Safe Harbor. Please note that information contained in these pages are of a personal nature and does not necessarily reflect that of any companies, organizations or individuals. In addition, some of these opinions are of a forward looking nature. Lastly the facts and opinions contained in these pages might not have been verified for correctness, so please use with caution. Happy Reading. Peter Lye

Beethoven Piano Concerto No 1 in C major Op 15-In memory of Michael Chan Khay Ghee

It is close to a year now since my maternal grandpa has passed on on 1 March 2009. It is with much trepidation since this is Chinese Lunar New Year week as it seems only yesterday that I visited him during Chinese Lunar New Year of 2009. Shortly thereafter, pneumonia took my grandpa away as he fought to fight the infection fiercely. I shared many of my younger days as a teenager with grandpa because we shared hobbies like HiFi, organ playing and photography together. He was also someone that I admired from a far as he has rode the roller coaster of life having made a small fortune and losing it all during his 40s ate a humble pie to be an employee to put food on the table for the family. To me, it is the hall mark of dexterity.

I have been listening to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 1 for over a month and has fallen in love with the piece and felt a certain connection between this piece and the sweet memories I had of my grandpa although I could not put a finger to it but would try explaining it. What got me started on the frenzy for this piece was the purchase of this piece played by Dutch Ronald Brautigam with Swedish Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra conducted by a British Andrew Parrott. What got me to purchase this SACD was the removal sale at HMV and having heard Brautigam I thought I cannot be too wrong with my selection. The CD went home with me as usual without any listening done as I normally buy a few at a time and do not want to bother the sales person too much as we have sort of become familiar with each other and greet each other on first name basis. As I gravitate towards the piece, I went hunting in my humble CD collection and found that I have 7 full versions of this piece in my collection not counting excerpts as I usually buy the full works. The 7 CDs are as follows:

1.Beethoven : Les Concertos (Zacharias/Hoelscher/Schiff-Vonk/Masure)-EMI 0946 367578 2

2.Beethoven KlavierKonzerte Nr. 1 & 2 (Argerich/Philharmonia Orchestra/Sinopoli)-DG 445 504-2

3.Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3 (Michelangeli/Weiner Symphoniker/Giulini)-DG 289449 757-2

4.Piano Concertos 1 & 2 (Aimard/Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Harnoncourt) Warner 2564 63779-2

5.Beethoven Piano Concertos 1 & 3 (Brautigam/Norrkpoing Symphony Orchestra/Parrott) BIS SACD-1692

6.Beethoven Klavierkonzerte Nos. 1 & 4 (Lang Lang/Orchestra de Paris/Eschenbach) DG 477 6719

7.Alfred Brendel Plays Beethoven (Brendel) VOX BOX CDX3 3502

As in the case of Chopin's piano concertos, his second piano concerto in B flat major Op 19 was actually written before his first piano concerto but the second piano concerto got published first and therefore had a lower opus number of 15. There is some opinion within a small camp of Beethoven experts that claim otherwise stating that just before the inaugural concert of the piece, it was discovered that the piano technician has tuned the piano a semi-tone below and therefore Beethoven had to play his so-called second piano concerto a semitone higher in C. However, this line of reasoning has limited following and we shall assume the posture of main stream wisdom.

The piano concerto is divided into 3 movements with a cadenza in this first movement. Beethoven himself penned 3 versions of the cadenza and of all the recordings I have, only Zacharias attempted to improvise on the cadenza and most of the other recordings made use of the original cadenza written by Beethoven. Argerich used the shorter but more difficult of the 3 versions of the cadenza together with Brautigam and the rest used the slightly longer cadenza written by Beethoven.

The first movement in Allegro con bio have the orchestra introducing the piece as usually done in concertos with the exception of a few. The piano enters with the motif that is to be the cast for much of the first movement. This motif is repeated through the various instruments of the orchestra and also with some transposition to other keys as far away as E major and then comes what seems like an abrupt end of the first movement at around the 9th minute and thereafter the motif transforms into a motif that seems far removed from the initial motif but works its way towards the initial motif towards the end of the movement for a final resolution of the movement. Of worthy mention in this movement is the amount of air-time devoted to the solo clarinet but not substantial for it to qualify as concerto of that genre.

The second movement in Largo is not a popular part of this 3 movement concerto but I must say that Lang Lang has done the second movement justice by juxtaposing his emotions into this very lyrical, romantic, waltz and slower movement. I have always equated Lang Lang's style as being over zealous in most of his other recordings but this took me by surprise. Perhaps I should have the conductor Eschenbach to thank for as you never know who is the master in a concerto; the conductor or the soloist and I still have not resolved this differential myself. I think it is more important for the conductor and soloist to have good chemistry.

The third movement in Rondo is the fastest of the 3 movements with a march like celebratory twist. Some have attributed this to the influence that Mozart's musical style might have influenced Beethoven citing similarities between this movement and Mozart's concerto K.491 as a case in point. Whichever way the debate falls into, I love this grand movement as it gives the concertos a final resolution as a celebratory concerto that is sometimes used in occasions like weddings. To add, there is quite a few humorous or cheeky sections in this movement.

Now back to the hard decision if there is a fire in the house and I only have time to save one of the 7 CDs, which would I choose. My choice would be the version by Argerich from Argentina. Her playing might not be technically as brilliant as Michelangeli, as exuberant as Lang Lang or have the originality of Zacharias but she seems to string the 3 movements very well into a complete concerto.

Cheers,,,,Peter Lye aka lkypeter

My Humble HiFi Setup

The pictures listed above is my current humble Hifi setup and I am very pleased with the sound. All power cable are Golden Strada #201 except for iTransport and BenchMark. iTransport because it uses special transformer and BenchMark because I ran out of funds :(

For Lazy Listening

1.MacMini CoreSolo with iTunes or Wadia iTransport i170 with Apple iPod Touch 64GB or SqueezeBox3

2.Toslink Cable to Benchmark DAC1

3.RCA unbalanced Acrolink to Modwirght SWL36.5

4.2 pairs of RCA unbalanced Golden Strada #201 to Wyred4Sound MC2X250,2X125 Biamp

5.2 pairs of Music Strada #79 speaker cable to Vandersteen 2CE Signature speakers

For more serious listening usually on weekends and holidays on SACD

1.Marantz SA11S2

2.RCA unbalanced Acrolink to Modwirght SWL36.5

3.2 pairs of RCA unbalanced Golden Strada #201 to Wyred4Sound MC2X250,2X125 Biamp

4.2 pairs of Music Strada #79 speaker cable to Vandersteen 2CE Signature speakers

I can say that I am at home with the sound now especially on classical music.

Cheers,,,,Peter Lye aka lkypeter