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Rudolf Serkin's US debut concert - a major restoration project
Review of this release: Gramophone, Awards Issue, 2009 Review of this release: Audiophile Audition
The recording here of Mozart's 27th Piano Concerto came at the end of Rudolf Serkin's first brief tour of the USA as a concert soloist - the entire tour lasted just two weeks and culminated in three concerts at Carnegie Hall with Toscanini, in his final year with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. The Toscanini concerts featured Serkin playing first the Beethoven 4th Concerto and then the Mozart. The third of the three concerts was broadcast, and an almost-complete acetate disc recording has survived of this historic performance. We were able to source a high-quality tape copy of these discs, though alas the quality of the tape does little to improve the damage done to the discs over the years. The restoration of this recording presented me with one of the greatest challenges so far in my career. Such were the obstacles and the slow pace of work that I frequently considered stopping and moving onto something else. However, this is not only a most important historical document, but also a particularly fine performance, and for both of these reasons I perservered. In addition to numerious very heavy clicks and electrical interference, a large portion of the music, especially through the second and third movements, was heavily compromised by repeated, distorted disc damage, cutting right through the musical frequencies to the point of near-obliteration. Such was the nature of this incredibly intrusive and unpleasant noise that it occupied for the most part a near complete revolution of the original disc, thus making listening a very uncomfortable experience, especially through the quiet second movement:
I have attempted, using the most up-to-date digital computer methods available, to repair as much of this damage as is currently possible. All too often the simple removal of noise reveals little or nothing below, and one is forced to dig deep into the sound patterns to try and find traces of individual harmonics so as to rebuild the sound of the piano and orchestra. The recording was also missing several sections of music. One begins six bars before the cadenza at the end of the first movement, and runs partway into that solo section. Others are briefer and occur during the finale when orchestra and soloist were playing together. I was able to merge in another more recent recording, sonically treated so as to mimic the sound of the Serkin/Toscanini, and these have filled those gaps remarkably convincingly (almost to the point of being undetectable) in the last movement. However, such is the nature of the cadenza, where one is listening specifically to a display of personality and virtuosity on the part of the soloist, that I decided not to attempt to patch this section, and the listener will hear a small jump toward the end of the first movement as a result.
The 29th Symphony carries with it the hallmark acoustic of NBC's somewhat notorious Studio 8H, which I do not find as sympathetic to the orchestra as that of Carnegie Hall, even when filtered through the kind of damaged discs heard here in the Piano Concerto. However, it is an excellent example of Toscanini's Mozart, where the use of a slimmed-down orchestra was very much ahead of its time. As Mortimer Frank notes (Arturo Toscanini - The NBC Years, Amadeus Press, 2002):
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 notes from Wikipedia
The Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595, is a concertante work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for piano or pianoforte and orchestra, the last piano concerto he wrote.
Time of composition The manuscript is dated 5 January 1791. However, Alan Tyson's analysis of the paper on which Mozart composed the work indicated that Mozart used this paper between December 1787 and February 1789, which implies composition well before 1791. Simon Keefe has written that the composition of the work dates from 1788. By contrast, Wolfgang Rehm has stated that Mozart composed this concerto in late 1790 and early 1791. Cliff Eisen has discussed the controversy over the time of composition in his review of the published facsimile of the score.
Premiere The work followed by some years the series of highly successful concertos Mozart wrote for his own concerts, and by the time of its premiere Mozart was no longer so prominent a performer on the public stage. It is a popular assumption that this concerto was first performed at a concert on 4 March 1791 in Jahn's Hall by Mozart and by a clarinetist Joseph Bähr.[3] Seen from today's state of scholarship however there is absolutely no proof that Mozart actually performed K. 595 on this day. The concert might well have been premiered by Mozart's pupil Barbara Ployer on the occasion of a public concert at the Auersperg palace in January 1791.[4] This was Mozart's last appearance in a public concert, as he took ill in September 1791 and died on 5 December 1791.
Instrumentation and movements The work is scored for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, solo piano and strings, which makes it thinner than Mozart's other late concertos, all of which except for No. 23 have trumpet and timpani. It has the following three movements:
Although all three movements are in a major key, minor keys are suggested, as is evident from the second theme of the first movement (in the dominant minor), as well as the presence of a remote minor key in the early development of that movement and of the tonic minor in the middle of the Larghetto. Another interesting characteristic of the work is its rather strong thematic integration of the movements, which would become ever more important in the nineteenth century. The principal theme of the Larghetto, for instance, is revived as the second theme of the final movement (in the 65th measure). The principal theme for finale was also used in Mozart's song "Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling" (also called "Komm Lieber Mai") , K. 596, which immediately follows this concerto in the Köchel catalogue. Mozart wrote down his cadenzas for the first and third movements.
Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._27_(Mozart)
Mozart Symphony No. 29 notes from Wikipedia
The Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 201, was completed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on 6 April 1774. It is, along with Symphony No. 25, one of his better known early symphonies. Stanley Sadie characterizes it as "a landmark ... personal in tone, indeed perhaps more individual in its combination of an intimate, chamber music style with a still fiery and impulsive manner."
Structure The symphony follows classical form:
The first movement is in sonata form, with a graceful principal theme characterized by an octave drop and ambitious horn passages. The second movement is scored for muted strings with limited use of the winds, and is also in sonata form. The third movement, a minuet, is characterized by nervous dotted rhythms and staccato phrases; the trio provides a more graceful contrast. The energetic last movement, another sonata-form movement in 6/8 time, connects back to the first movement with its octave drop in the main theme.
Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._29_(Mozart)
Notes on the 24-bit download: Please see this page for test files and further information regarding this format. Although restoration work is done at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, we have upsampled the final 24-bit master to 48kHz for additional replay compatibility of our FLAC download. Our twenty-four bit FLAC downloads can be replayed in full quality using a standard DVD video player, a DVD writer and an inexpensive piece of PC software - see here for more information about replay from Video DVD discs.
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