What's Best in Piano Solo Recordings?

Orb

New Member
Sep 8, 2010
3,010
2
0
For me it has to be both Evgeny Kissin and Krystian Zimerman and their playing anything by Chopin (personally to me this is the greatest piano composer-pianist).
Evgeny being younger can bring great energy to the key hit, while Zimerman has that older experience and finesse-rythm (but sadly lost the ability to strike the key with the highest energy required at times for Chopin), both excellent but bring subtly different aspects to their interpretations.

Cheers
Orb
 
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Ikuyo Kamiya ?– Beethoven's "Appassionata"
Label: RCA ?– RDC-4
Series: Direct Cutting Mastering Lab Series – RDC-4
Format: Vinyl, LP, 45 RPM, Album, Direct Disc
Country: Japan Released: 1977 Genre:Classical

This is an excellent example of an "all-out" recording, being both a direct-to-disc and mastered at 45 RPM. The result is the finest piano recording I have yet heard, though there is some serious competition from Reference Recordings, Athena and others. The sonics are outstanding, with the piano recorded very upfront, so it appears to be in the listening room itself. The dynamic gradations, transparency, detail retrieval and cleanness on peaks are all extraordinary. It is also natural sounding with an excellent sense of decay and a low sound-floor. The performance will not equal a Schnabel, Gilels or Solomon, but it is still very competent and enjoyable. This record has been on the TAS list for years.Check the condition, it could have been a store demonstrator.
From: http://www.high-endaudio.com/SR-DIVINITY.html


lill best piano.jpg

Schumann Fantasy in C, Op.17
Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op.26
Kinderszenen, Op.15

John Lill (piano)

Recorded 11-13 December 2003 in Henry Wood Hall, London

Long Out Of Print 2004 All Analogue 2LP 180gm Gatefold Original. John
Lill, Piano Recorded At Henry Wood Hall, Southwark, London In
December 2003 By Tony Faulkner. Cut By Stan Ricker. This Recording
Received An 11/11 Score On Michael Fremer's Analog Planet Blog,
August 1st, 2004.



[This review is of newly recorded analogue material issued on 180-gram
vinyl]

CD No: GREEN ROOM PRODUCTIONS
GREENPRO 4001/02

Two 180-gram LPs; analogue masters

Producer: John Boyden
Engineer: Tony Faulkner
Duration: 76 minutes
Reviewed: January 2005

“This issue is potentially of immense importance to the classical recording industry. For the first time in almost 20 years a UK-based classical company has recorded new material in both digital (CD) and analogue (LP) sound; the former is available on Classics for Pleasure. Because of this I shall devote a substantial part of this article – with no disrespect to John Lill – to a comparative evaluation of analogue and digital sound.
Enter Tony Faulkner’s company Green Room Productions, which records in both analogue and digital formats. The question for many readers will be why they should seek to restart a dead medium. Is this refusal to kneel at the altar of digital sound a piece of quaint nostalgia, or are there good audio reasons for it?
The answer to this question is, as already stated, very simple: good analogue is and always has been superior to digital sound whether on re-mastering or new recording. As the sleeve-notes record, at the recording sessions everyone including John Lill was amazed at how much better the analogue session master was than the digital equivalent. The reasons for this superiority are complex, but on the technical front Green Room use only two tracks (two mikes in other words), modernised Studer 10-inch tape-decks and modern valve amplification. The pressing company RTI use cutting heads which can cope with an uncompressed dynamic range on the production master-tape and the use of 180 gram vinyl; shorter playing-sides should further improve dynamic range, bass response, pitch stability and eliminate hiss. In terms of home listening, today there are turntable/arm/cartridge combos, amplifiers, speakers and cables which will reveal far more of the information on an LP, new or old, than ever before. This produces sound which has definition, bloom, sparkle, resonance and richness, an ability to reproduce a proper sense of acoustic space and sound and a natural sense of presence, instrumental timbre and flow. The tiring block-like construction of digital sound is entirely absent, as is its glossy artificiality.
All of these qualities can be heard on these Lill LPs. At all times the piano has more bloom, its attack and presence are effortlessly conveyed, the entire tonal range has natural sparkle, body and resonance, and the acoustic is tangible. The dynamic range is also greater in both micro and macro terms and this helps give a far greater impression of that elusive pianistic quality, touch
. The CFP CD is good but its sound is more forced and the acoustic is a slightly reverberant nothingness in which the piano is suspended, and as with all CDs the sound lacks naturalness and flow.
Classical Source’s editor, Colin Anderson, was at the December 2003 sessions and he told me that the analogue master, as played-back then, exactly caught the sound of the heard-live piano, which had been rebuilt and tuned according to John Lill’s wishes. To vinyl aficionados this will come as no surprise, whether you listen to Ashkenazy in Rachmaninov in 1973 on Decca, or the then Stephen Bishop in Brahms in 1968 on Philips, or Kentner in Liszt in 1963 on EMI – you will hear piano sound which has all of the qualities mentioned above and very importantly you will actually be able to tell in blind comparisons which pianist is playing by the nature of the piano sound they produce – something CDs struggle to do.
Am I exaggerating the superiority of analogue sound? No. I hold musical evenings when friends bring round 78s, LPs, DVDs, VCs and CDs, and even those who have been brought up in the digital era admit that whether it be orchestra, piano, chamber ensembles or the human voice, analogue sound is better, the word that is used over and over again is “natural”. Some months ago I interviewed Mike Hudson, the President of Classic Records, the world’s largest producer of 180/200-gram re-mastering. He said that when LPs are reproduced properly they have a strange, almost indefinable, quality – which digital sound cannot emulate.
Certainly it is true that the more expensive the equipment then the superiority of analogue becomes ever more apparent, but at whatever price it is still there.
Finally I would urge those who have no knowledge of LPs, or who have been persuaded to ditch vinyl, to try and listen to these Lill/Green Room LPs. In the classical market, analogue recording may almost be dead, but that shouldn’t be the case: analogue is simply better and companies such as Green Room deserve support.”
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=22
 

mullard88

Well-Known Member
Jun 5, 2010
948
62
1,588
Here's one of my favorite piano solos: David Lanz, Skyline Firedance. There are two CDs included. They are the same titles, one cd plays the works with piano and orchestra, the other cdlays the same works with a solo piano.
 

jtinn

Industry Expert
Apr 20, 2010
503
70
483
I might be biased but these are the finest piano recordings I have heard. It does not hurt that Ilya Itin is one of the greatest pianists of our time. This recording was simultaneously done at Quad DSD and 30ips tape. It is currently available for download at single, double and quad DSD. In the near future it will be available as a 12" 45rpm release as well as available on reel to reel tape.

Wave Kinetics Records WVK-001 Cover.jpg
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Wave Kinetics Records WVK-002 Cover.jpg
 

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