Album release - official preview track

[ronde_des_sylphes]

My second album of operatic transcriptions - the sequel to A Night at the Opera - is scheduled to be released this year, on Sept 15. It will be available through Divine Art Records -https://www.divineartrecords.com/DAhome.htm - and of course the usual online retail outlets.

I'm delighted to be able to present the track they have chosen as the official preview track. It's the third track on the album, and it is Leschetizky's left hand only reworking of the sextet from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

Enjoy!

[georgey]

Amazing performance!  I trust that you did not sneak in a few notes with your right hand.   I have 9/15 marked on my calendar.  Regards.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Yeah, it's of course very easy to cheat like that. The disturbing thing is that what you can do with studio editing nowadays probably constitutes a greater level of cheating (it goes well beyond splicing, believe me! - in fairness such things tend to be emergency edits where something wrong has been missed during the take and retake process.) I seriously considered videoing the track recording as a form of alibi!

In truth, as virtuoso left hand only pieces go, this is significantly easier than some Godowsky, for example.
 
For further info, my own track mini-samples can be found here:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=63807.0

Track listing:
1 Bellini-Jaell Reminiscences de Norma *
2 Bellini-Wright Col sorriso d’innocenza *
3 Donizetti-Leschetizky Andante finale de Lucia di Lammermoor
4 Rossini-Thalberg Moses Fantasy
5 Wagner-Liszt Lohengrin’s Admonition
6 Verdi-Wright Fantasy on Miserere *
7 Meyerbeer-Kullak Cavatine de Robert le Diable *
8 Massenet-Saint-Saens La mort de Thaïs *
9 Wagner-Liszt Fantasy on Themes from Rienzi

* denotes commercial premiere recording.

Approx 67 mins running time.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

It's a touch spammy of me, but I really like the cover artwork (it's from a 16th century painting by Jose de Ribera), and here it is, together with the on-cd track listing.

[thirtytwo2020]

Wow! Terrific!

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

[georgey]

I very much enjoyed your new CD “The Operatic Pianist II”. Congratulations! I will give it 5 stars when I write my review later today.  Amazon frowned at the very short length of my review of your first CD, so I will have to figure something to say.  I’m not much of a writer.

I felt the acoustic environment and the tuning of your piano are very good.  This is not always the case, unfortunately.  Again, your liner notes are very informative and well written.  Your choice of order of the pieces on the CD is very effective.

The Jaell paraphrase I feel is very well worth hearing. Your Bellini transcription is beautiful and tastefully done.  I have no doubt that you played the Lucia di Lammermoor without the aid of the right hand, but it sounds almost too perfect.  I know you have the ability to edit in ways that were not possible until recently.  Leschetizky does a beautiful arrangement here.  Your paraphrase of Verdi’s Miserere is very well done and quite effective.  It matches perfectly to my ear the style of the other pieces on the CD.  The ending is maybe the most exciting of all the endings on this CD.  The Saint-Saens I feel offers a welcome change in sound and texture to other works on your CD.  It also offers a change by ending on a gentle note.  It was a great idea to make your recording the first commercial recording of this work.  

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Thanks for your kind words. There was so much work done on the sound balance and, especially, noise reduction. There was a concerning about of background (primarily mechanical - pedal etc) noise on the raw takes, and I don't have fond memories of the removal process!

I definitely believe that if one is being really strict about the editing process, the same rigour should be applied to the sleeve notes (which were far more fun to write!)

I'm really pleased with the inclusion of the Jaëll and Saint-Saëns; they contribute more to the overall whole, imo, than fairly standard generic paraphrases. It's to be expected that Saint-Saëns would write something good, but the Jaëll is perhaps more of a surprise in that regard. I looked at a few other of his paraphrases and thought the Norma was probably the best. And it's nice to add some more premiere recordings to my collection (after the Martucci on the first disc).

[georgey]

Technology has greatly improved the editing process I am guessing.  I have big name CD’s where I can hear traffic sounds in the background (sounds like a milk truck making a delivery to the recording studio) or birds chirping in the background.  My Van Cliburn recording of the Liszt piano sonata (you should record this gem!) done in 1976 has maybe a dozen places where I can hear an edited a re-recorded section being spliced in.  My Ashkenazy complete Beethoven sonatas on London label has 1 spliced in section that lasts maybe 10 seconds that sounds like it was made in a completely different location using a different piano and very different acoustical environment.  It was obvious they made no attempt to mask this.  Your recording sounded 100% clean.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

If someone transplants a section from a completely different piano and environment, even today I think it would be obvious to an attentive listener. But I think noise removal can now be done in much more detail with specialist software. It can be time-consuming, which may be why you do still hear recordings with odd background noses - there are also issues where removing the unwanted noise causes unexpected sonic artefacts. I know that more than half the studio time was, to my chagrin, spent on noise removal. And also, thanks for the Amazon review!