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CD
2: Ian MUNRO (1963) / Dreams CD
3 Cypres CYP9616 This live recording of the young gladiators in combat at the Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition 2003 demonstrates the good health of piano teaching and learning at the highest level. There are some fine performances to be enjoyed - no editing or patching! Biographical details and track lists of the three CDs are on line at the Cypres website. I was vastly
impressed by the German winner's Prokofiev (far the hardest and
most challenging of his piano concertos) and it was interesting
that one of the set pieces was by Ian Munro, well remembered in
UK as 2nd prizewinner of the Leeds International Piano Competition
(1978). The booklet characterises the 2003 winner fairly thus: A noteworthy feature of this welcome release is the quality of the orchestral accompaniments and their well balanced recording, without the piano unduly prominent as feared and which so often destroys concerto recordings on CD. Roberto Giordano's Op 110 is impressive and Jin Ju delighted me in the Mozart D minor concerto but, on the rest of the third disc, I was less captivated by the Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert playing and seriously wondered how long young pianists and piano competitions would be limited by reliance on the ubiquitous Steinway, which dominates the concert and recording world and is inclined to stultify imagination of sonic potentialities in classical and early 19 C music? Peter Grahame Woolf |
QUEEN
ELISABETH PIANO COMPETITION 2003
"
- - Severin von Eckardstein. Maturity, stylistic plenitude
and fullness of sound were combined in him with an indefinable air
of culture, exempt of arrogance and show, resulting in performances
that were anything but adventitious. We shall be listening again
and again to what this young man was able to do under the very difficult
conditions, as regards both length and intensity, of the toughest
of international competitions. We can but be convinced that the
discovery of a true Beethovenian, able to master both a contemporary
score and to give such a performance of the Prokofiev Second, is
unquestionably to be assigned to the Competition’s credit."