Classical Court From Perotin to Prokofiev (and beyond), performed by Caruso to Khatia, it's all here.

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Rachmaninoff's 1st and 3rd PC's - Byron Janis - Reiner/Munch

152.163.207.71

Posted by John E on April 16, 2000 at 21:53:25

In my quest to own every Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto ever recorded, I picked up this disc a couple of days ago. The first word that came to mind when I started listening to it was "fast." Well, maybe fast doesn't quite describe it correctly, let's try blindingly fast. These Concertos are played so fast, that the CD started spinning backwards. Just for comparison sake, Ashkenazy/Previn's first movement of the 3rd is played in 18.44 minutes, Janis and Munch catapult through theirs in 14.36. The entire length of Ashkenazy's 3rd is 45.10, Janis sprints through his in 37.26. That's one helluva difference. Janis isn't quite that quick with his 1st, strolling through it in an almost leisurely 25.19 minutes, but still nosing out Ashkenazy's 28.15. Honestly, though the speed was very distracting, it was not quite as distracting as the recording itself.
Usually I won't bitch about the sound of a recording done in 1957, but coming from a Living Stereo reissue I did expect something better then what I heard. In the 1st with Reiner, the orchestra is out front, waaay out front, with Janis plunking away in the background on what almost sounds like a toy piano. There was absolutely no body or bottom end to the piano, just a limpwristed imitation of the sound of one. Reiner and the boys made up for that though, they kept trying to blast me out of my listening chair with bombardments of in your face horns, followed with the strings in such close pursuit that they made me duck to keep from being jabbed in the cheek by a flailing bow. Subtle they weren't. Munch and the 3rd fared better, but again, the recording limited my involvement by being plagued with the same troubles as the 1st. Through it all, Janis gamely banged away on his miniature piano, but whoever remastered this disc didn't give him much of a chance to win me over. Maybe the problem was the master was accidently sped up in the remastering process, (yeah, right) that would explain the "whiz bang I'm outta here" performance, and almost explain why Janis was playing a piano that sounded better suited for Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Rachmaninoff's Piano Concertos never fail to bring out many emotions in me, I can't think of one version I have that doesn't. But listening to Janis tinkle the toy keys and race through his performances while Reiner and Munch reached out to grab my neck and shake my head around like a rag doll, left me with only this one constantly nagging emotion, "Where the hell is the stop button on this goddamn remote?"

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