Earl Wild renditions of Rach

[Spatula]

Earl Wild renditions of Rach...are these good recordings???

[shasta]

Earl Wild's Carnegie Hall 90th birthday concert is scheduled for Nov 29 of next year.  What an event that will be!  Let's all go!

(His Rach is OK, although I prefer Ashkenazy's Rach)

[Spatula]

Earl Wild's Carnegie Hall 90th birthday concert is scheduled for Nov 29 of next year.  What an event that will be!  Let's all go!

(His Rach is OK, although I prefer Ashkenazy's Rach)

I have Ash's rach and I don't like it.

[DarkWind]

Earl Wild's Carnegie Hall 90th birthday concert is scheduled for Nov 29 of next year.  What an event that will be!  Let's all go!

(His Rach is OK, although I prefer Ashkenazy's Rach)

I have Ash's rach and I don't like it.

Same here. I personally think its horrid.

[Spatula]

GRRRR  >:(R! now thinking about it! I really don't like Ash's 2nd rach because he rolls the bloody opening sequence! 

Even though my hands can comfortabily do an octave, I'd just move the 13th or whatever up 8 tones so its only a 5th or something.  I'd rather hear that than rolled chords.  The rolled chords just wrecks the atmosphere because the proceeding idea is the arpeggios and the broken chords...so its like the rolling of the opening chords just gives away the suspense rather than working on it. 

[DarkWind]

My left hand can only reach an octave, a 9th if I try, but I could still play the opening chords without rolling them, if I try hard enough.

[Spatula]

so how was Earl's renditions anyways??

[shasta]

No one beats Ashkenazy's interpretation of Rach's Paganini.  Absolutely breathtaking.

I like Wild's playing of Barber and Paderewski and the recordings he made when he was younger of Schumann.  Old school romance! 

He also wrote some pieces of his own --- a sonata of his comes to mind.  Very American-sounding, with hints of blues and folk.

[brewtality]

get his demonic liszt cd if you can find it.

[joell12068]

Earl Wild is superb.  I've not heard one lousy recording from him.  One of my favorites is his  CD of his transcriptions of Gershwin.

[pskim]

GRRRR  >:(R! now thinking about it! I really don't like Ash's 2nd rach because he rolls the bloody opening sequence!

Rachmaninoff himself rolls these openings and he is in the Guiness book of records for the largest hands span of musicians.  He could easily reach a C minor chord with his left hand with all his five fingers, i.e.  C, E flat, G, C,and finally G.

No one beats Ashkenazy's interpretation of Rach's Paganini.  Absolutely breathtaking.

I absolutely AGREE!!!  I have yet to find a recording that will out do his randition of the Paganini with Andre Previn!!  Absolutely the best recording of this piece, especially the 18th variation!

[DarkWind]

GRRRR  >:(R! now thinking about it! I really don't like Ash's 2nd rach because he rolls the bloody opening sequence!

Rachmaninoff himself rolls these openings and he is in the Guiness book of records for the largest hands span of musicians.  He could easily reach a C minor chord with his left hand with all his five fingers, i.e.  C, E flat, G, C,and finally G.

Well then, it's kinda stupid that he didn't mark an arpeggio down, isn't it?

[Motrax]

To clear things up... Rachmaninoff doesn't roll the opening chords. He plays the bass note of the chord as a grace note, immediately followed by the rest of the chord. So rhythmically it sounds like

b'BUM... bum.  b'BUMM... bum.  bBUM!... Bum... etc

But Rachmaninoff was known to change his music on a whim. He would play The Prelude (op. 3 no. 2) with different endings, cadenzas, or just about anything which suited him at the moment. One of his recordings of the prelude Op. 23 No. 5 uses dotted rhythms instead of what's written and features extra chords at the end. He makes some cuts in the recording of his third concerto, and despite popular belief, this was probably not due to the shorter recording capacity of records. I believe Rachmaninoff also omits a few chords in his recording of the first concerto, though there's a chance they could've just been lost due to poor recording quality.

It's impossible to play a piece "the same as Rachmaninoff," because the composer himself played differently on different occasions. Thus, one should follow the music, and only make changes based on personal conviction, rather than trying to imitate the way the composer played it.

And although I haven't listened to Earl Wilde's Rachmaninoff, his Tchaikowsky is very, very good.

My favorite recordings of Rachmaninoff's concertos are by Rafael Orozco, who won the Leeds competition around 1967. This set is relatively cheap, and well worth it. I wrote a review of the CDs, so please read it if you're interested in obtaining some quality music.  Here's the amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000004167/ref=cm_rv_thx_view/002-9498034-6700857?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

[Spatula]

Hmmm I've not heard of one bad thing of Mr Wilde on this forum, maybe his recordings of Rach was what I should have got instead of Ashkenazy's versions.