Vladimir Ashkenazy performs Bartók's 2nd Piano Concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by John Hopkins at Auckland Town Hall on November 22nd 1982.
I know this is something perhaps only a pianist who has performed with orchestra would be aware of, but this piece is odd for the fact the entire string section doesn’t play a single note in the first movement. Having them sit so close to the pianist would make me very conscious that they are sitting there staring at me! I have played many concertos, but not this one (yet). I wonder if it bothers anyone else who has performed it? Ashkenazy is a real professional and is totally engaged in what he’s doing, so he seems oblivious to it. I heard him around this time playing Rachmaninoff Third in Cleveland and went backstage to get his autograph. He was very kind and seemed humble and almost shy. Thanks for uploading this stunning performance.
@@dmachine07 yeah, I know. It’s one of the coolest things about the piece and makes for interesting rehearsal setup. Half the orchestra can go home after rehearsing the last two movements first!! They like that.
It makes me wonder if perhaps they had issues during rehearsal and weren’t ending together. It’s very treacherous in that spot. It was exactly together.
Three flutes is very common in music from the 20th Century and often one of them doubles with piccolo. If you want something strange, Franck’s Les Djinns has four bassoons, but otherwise a normal orchestra. That was written in the middle of the 1880s.
Of course, there are already four bassoons in many works by Berlioz, forty or fifty years earlier. But the point is that Bartok's score requests only two flutes.
@@MrBohuslav oh, I see. I have the score, but didn’t check. The unusual thing is that the strings are silent in the first movement. As a pianist, I would find it distracting to have them sitting over my shoulder for the whole movement, knowing they were watching me! I just checked the full score on imslp. Bartók 2 has three flutes with piccolo doubled.
Thank you. I thought not necessary to check the score, as I was naïve enough to consider that Wikipedia was right (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._2_(Bart%C3%B3k)#Instrumentation)
I can't stand conductors who direct with both arms, it's very amateurish. For one thing it's harder to follow, which do you choose to go with? And it looks terrible.
The pianist and musicians are obviously very talented, but I do not like this composition at all. There is no beauty to it. It is a lot of notes just together with dissonance.
