I have a playlist with my late father’s favorites and I am looking for the best of the best PC1.
I have not found one that recreates the soundstage i remember from listening with him as a child.
His birthday is approaching (12/15/31) and I go through that playlist yearly in his honor. Being that day, the playlist starts with Beethoven PC 5 “the Emperor” and then moves to Brahms PC 1 and others.
I appreciate suggestions.
This is a great way to honor in his memory!
Can you estimate the date of your first memories to the Brahms concerto?
If it goes way back, it could even be from the Mercury Living Stereo series (1954, Rubinstein, Rainer, CSO).
Just playing that one right now. It sounds gorgeous.
I’ve listened to that version and really do enjoy the fluidity of her music. The older one seems more dynamic. Both very good. Mine came as part of a multiple cd boxed set; I was after her Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4. and this was too good a deal to pass on.
My first memory was at Festival Casals in Puerto Rico in 9th June 1975. To me it was larger than life. I was 9 years old.
Claudio Abbado directing the PR Symphonic Orchestra and Rudolf Serkin on the piano.
Fond memories of the festival over the years but that year in particular was superb:
Day one: Zubin Mehta directed Itzhak Perlman playing Brahms,
Day two: then Stravinsky, Beethoven’s 7th Symphony
Day three: Claudio Abbado directed Eugene Istomin playing The Emperor, Webern and Strauss
Day four: was Brahsm PC 1 and Symph IV
Day five: Jorge Mester directing, Beverlu Sills soprano on various Mozart and Ravel
Day six: Jorge Mester directing Isaac Stern violin Bartok and Beethoven
Day seven: Beethoven sonatas, Schubert with Serkin on piano, Schneider on Violin
Day eight: closed with Scheider directing, Stern on violin adn Leonard Rose on Cello playing Mozart, Berlioz and Brahms
The festival was my dad’s yearly thing. It was 1.5 hours each way with a visit to Howard Johnson for ice cream afterwards. Great memories.
will look for it for a listening session tonight. THANKS!
Dad’s favorite was very old vinyl by Serkin, Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. Pretty sure it was from the 50’s and he picked it up in the mainland after returning from serving in Korea. It was mono if memory serves me right.
There is a remastered version by Sony which is great.
Is this the performance you refer to, as it is an RCA Red Seal mono recording? A fine performance as I recall. RCA was known for their Living Stereo Shaded Dog LPs from the mid-fifties.
From my personal copy of Jonathan Valin’s The RCA Bible, the first RAC Stereo Shaded Dog LP was the most excellent Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra with Fritz Reiner conducting the CSO. Catalog # LSC-1806.
It has come up several times on the forum where posts have referred to Mercury Living Stereo, and RCA Living Presence records. Mercury LPs were known as Living Presence, and RCA as Living Stereo. To this day many are worth seeking out.
That would be my dream concert!
and I was a young 9 year old. Impressed me but I was not mature enough to enjoy it as my dad did.
The Festival was huge deal. I found a program from 1975. Look at day 1:
It’s this version I was referring to:
I don’t know if they recorded in stereo and then made mono and stereo LP versions from that master. Considering that epoche, it’s likely they did.
Anything by Fritz Reiner and the CSO is top notch imo. Hard to go wrong with any of those classic Living Stereo LPs on the RCA label*
*corrected
Those would be Living Stereo LPs on the RCA label.
Yes thanks for the correction. I haven’t heard a Fritz Reiner CSO album I did not enjoy.
Happy Birthday Paul
As to your last question, about a double mono/stereo release, I agree that in the late 1950s and early 1960s this was a common practice. But this Rubinstein/Reiner was recorded in 1954 and released as LP LM1831 that year and as a mono reel-to-reel in 1955. I glean from Discogs that it was not released in stereo until 1977 on ARL 1-2044 with a different album cover and that a stereo version with the original album cover was not released until 1994 by Classic Records (but it was also remastered). I happen to own both ARL 1-2044 and the Classic re-issue, and the sound on the Classic is a huge improvement. I have never heard the original mono, but I imagine its sound is preferable to the ARL stereo.
As to double release practices, in the mid 1950s the original stereo releases were likely to be in the form of reel-to-reel, but only a few new releases got the honor. I own a complete set of the record reviews of High Fidelity magazine. The Rubinstein/Reiner was favorably reviewed in the first volume (1955 covering mid-1954 to mid-1955). The next two volumes basically review stereo only in a special section devoted to stereo tapes. The first reviews of stereo releases of the Brahms first concerto appear in the fifth volume and pertain to Fleisher/Szell on Epic and Graffman/Munch on RCA. These titles were double releases on mono LP and stereo LP. I suspect the existence of the RCA Graffman performance helped keep the RCA Rubinstein stereo in the vaults, though the High Fidelity reviewers preferred Rubinstein’s performance to both Fleisher and Graffman. In The Absolute Sound issue 29 Arthur B. Lintgen compared a passel of performances of this concerto. For performance he prefers Gilels/Jochum, Serkin/Szell and Rubinstein/Reiner. He doesn’t love the sound on these three, nor any of the other records he mentions. In particular he says “the Rubinstein/Reiner version does not have the sound usually associated with the classic Reiner recordings of the late Fifties.” But notice that he had access in 1983 only to the original mono release and the 1977 ARL release I mentioned.
The current TAS list of super recordings lists only the Curzon/Szell on Decca. Since the original poster specifically asked about the best sounding record of this concerto I think its is wrong to default to the Rubinstein/Reiner as an answer to his question. Personally I don’t know the Curzon recording and I don’t believe I have a steady opinion on the best sounding recorded performance. As to performance I most love Serkin, followed by Fleisher. In CD format I think the Fleisher sound is better than Serkin. Like other responders I love the Grimaud performances among more recent releases.
Enjoy your cake, Paul.
Is @dchang05 still in Japan? If so I hope he and his family are safe.
