If you listen to this for 5 minutes and then click to something else, you're doing yourself a disservice. This quartet needs to be heard all the way through to have its full effect. The microtonal shifts stop, and the coda completely changes character to a gorgeous, but bleak, tonal nirvana.
One of the best piano concertos, honestly, I like this concerto more than any of Rachmaninoff piano concertos! And that final coda is the best moment in music ever, it's just so astonishing!
This is the best recording. There are some changes in the music that are not written in the score, such as b flat on the piano at 0:17, for instance, or the cello playing an octave higher at 2:10. These changes are for the better, in my opinion
Check out yevgeny subdin’s recording, with the north carolina symphony. The orchestra sounds absolutely crisp. You can hear everything. Also hamelin with london phil is great
Can any music theory nerds out there explain to me the crazy dissonant chord at m. 57 in the Pantomime? Is there a story behind that? A hidden meaning? Because it is so different than the rest of the piece!
That dissonance is fascinating! From a purely harmonic point of view, it has no business being there: the violinist's A-flat and F# clash with the piano's implied G7 chord -- true, the A-flat could make this a G7(flat 9), but since the A-flat simply vanishes, can we hear that as a functional chord tone? (It's only an implied G7 because we're lacking a B or B-flat to tell us whether this is a true G7 or a Gm7. But I digress.) BUT, it isn't completely out of thin air either. Instead, looking back at the first movement, that lovely, lilting Pastorale, we find the violin landing on a long-held low G (in measures 60 - 65, 2:12), which the violin then carries up to a nice resolution on a high C. (We've done an extended V - I motion here, harmonically. Very satisfying.) Yet the movement doesn't end here... instead, the piano continues with the original melodic idea, before it and the violin come to a conclusion on a G - F - A-flat chord in the piano while the violin trills D/E-flat. We've ended the movement on a non-resolution -- an incomplete G7(flat 9)... which is exactly where the final Pantomime movement will end as well. So perhaps that striking dissonance in the last movement is harmonically pointing us back to the first movement (the high, long F#/G reminding us of that long, low G), and setting us up for the final non-resolution of the entire piece.
I can‘t decide whether this or Medtners Quintet is the best piece of all time. The Quintet has more depth, More detail, is More intimate, magical, great as a great form combining and Linking everything together, but: that tranquillo romantic theme of 3rd movevent is so without any words and the coda is like the end of the world leading into that final festive dance, celebrating everything that was and will be, well …
Le plus abouti des 3 , le 3 e de Medtner brille par son envolé et sa richesse sonore servi par une interprétation hors pair de Ponti . On aimerait qu’il apparaisse au programme des concerts !
