I was SO fortunate to have heard Maestro play this final movement (as an encore) on two of the four unforgettable recitals I attended, including Carnegie and the San Francisco Opera House, after which I finally got to meet him! It was absolutely electrifying, and a dearly treasured memory! ❤🎶🎹🙏
Based on this roster and watching it several times, it's Horowitz for me. Simply because he never loses the singing tone even with the flurry of fortissimo runs, chords and octaves. You can still pick out the shape of the phrases. Second here is Shishkin for me for the same qualities.
These collectings are amazing. The conditions of recording are not equal, and I don't have not excellent sensitivity about these. But I like Rachmaninov in the feeling of slavic(?) and great cold flowing rhythm. Thus I am attracted by Lugansky and Yunchan Lim.
I'm a bit biased as I've only watched a few of these entirely but Malofeev's performance just astounds me each and every time. He's only 17 here! And having seen his full performance, while not as accurate/clear as Lim's, his playing really reaches his audience. His playing just really gives the aura of playing music rather than tackling a monster of a concerto and it brought tears to my eyes. I also love Lugansky and Wangs' performances.
If horowitz's octaves in this performance were not out of time that would be the best octaves i would have ever heard, but on the other hand if they were not out of time they would not stand out so clearly as they did...so in the end i ll take horowitz's and his poisonous interpretation that led me to write this review...
People in the comments here criticize Horowitz for making some tiny mistakes in his performance in the video. Listen, when Horowitz performed Rach 3 in front of... Rachmaninoff himself the latter was moved to the core of his being and proclaimed he'd never thought he would hear his own concerto played so perfectly. He then became best friends with Horowitz until he passed away. Young/Middle aged Horowitz was an absolute beast. The Horowitz we see here was in his late 70s after a period of alcohol addiction and antidepressants which caused him to have memory lapses for a while. We see a Horowitz after his recovery, bringing one last homage to his best friend. That alone makes this the best performance. Second is of course Argerich, there is a video somewhere where she watches this exact video and is moved to tears how sublime his performance is. Lim? Wang? Lang Lang? Give me a break. No emotion, no passion, just adults who were drilled since they were toddlers to play perfectly. Their performances lack authenticity, which is a problem with a lot of Asian pianists in my opinion. Too much focus on virtuosity and less so on authentic emotional expression. tl;dr Horowitz best, Rachmaninoff worshipped his performance of his own third concerto. Nuff said.
I agree totally. And there’s something to be said for Russians playing Russian music. Olga kern plays this concerto so much better than the young pianist from South Korea. Also I love Bronfman
