Magical ride right from the beginning! This is so emotional and full of wonderful imagination from Prokofiev as his pieces always tend to be. Great performance also!!!
Heavenly Helen has the All knowing Eye rocking Bach on viola.. A heads up viola lovers- in the credits of the (on youtube) "Roswell 1994 movie The UFO cover up" features the 4th Prelude with it's implied harmonies. Bach covers!
Today, 70 years after the Master's death, listening again to this recording, it gives me the feeling, that this music predicts much more things yet to come. It's cold and in the same time compassionate. Fearless. Reasonable.
This is one of the best piano concertos ever written, Prokofiev a great pianist himself has done a brilliant job by this concerto as a composer and himself as a performer. Very romantic while extremely modern. I never get tired of it and I have listened to it for more than 60 years with different pianists and this is one of the best.
Aside from Menuhin and one or two other violinists (inclusive of, more recently, Isabelle Faust) it's such a shame - a tragedy even - that this piece hasn't been taken up more widely by solisten and conductors given its many merits, and this to the extent whereby it is heard far more in the concert hall. Although it may not be among the very greatest violin concerti in the same way as, say, the Mendelssohn's Op.64, and this further to the piano being Schumann's more natural instrument, the 'strings composer' Mendelssohn also wrote two credible piano concertos...Anyway, thanks for posting!
I love this recording; it has clarity, melody, and strict adherence to the score. John Ogdon was a true master at playing Scriabin. This has become my favorite interpretation of Scriabin's Third Piano Sonata.
Such tender and delicate rendering of Mozart, such natural flow of musical ideas...owning this collection and listeting to Mr. Bilson's lectures has been an honour.