Beethoven Triple Concerto (Karajan)

I think some great artists or critics tend to go over the top, for their personal reasons, when they judge a great effort for a milestone recording that, for any reason, went astray.

However, a recording where you can have arguably the best performers of the day with the greatest orchestra at that time is a fact of music as such and we can always celebrate it. If the result does not do any justice to our (and possibly some of the participants in that recording project) expectations, so be it. Still, it's interesting to know how "good" all this "creme de la creme" of classical music artists sound in a work that didn't manage to be honoured that much in the history of substantive and memorable recordings.

Parla

Richter was usually very honest but quite often with a strange sense of humour. I don't like the recording either but I find Karajan's three coats of gloss on everything he does a problem, even in Bruckner, even in Strauss. I've listerned to the Karajan and Dausgaard performances on disc but prefer Arrau/Szeryng/Starker, they seem to just play it as chamber music, like a piano trio, nothing is overdone. I don't know what the critics made of it but it is currently available on Austrailian Eloquence with Brendel/Haitink in the Fantasy op80.

I also took Richter's words to mainly refer to the album cover. I think he said something very selfdeprecating  about the 3 of them with a big grin on their faces.

I do not see the necessity for describing the recording in particularly pejorative terms. It may not be an absolute reference but I would challenge anybody with ears not to be won over by its exuberance, the sound of the orchestra, and the argument made by its 3 soloists. Maybe, the rapport between soloists is better in other recordings (in 'absolute' terms) but it remains that Rostropovich, Richter and Oistrakh, when compared to most of the competition, usually had more to say, even in circumstances where they are heard better elsewhere. I suspect that the sales figures for this Triple Concerto will vindicate it.

It is a piece that seems to be rather badly served on period instruments, is there an available recording on period instruments ? I have the Karajan and haven't felt the need to seek out an alternative version but I would like to hear how it sounds with period instruments.

Robert - like yourself and others I have the Mutter et al collaboration with Karajan on DG vinyl. I do like this one, as I have long been a fan of Mutter's playing, and have been lucky enough in the past to hear her in concert in London twice - one very memorable performance indeed of Stravinsky's violin concerto (one of my favourites of his works). Alas I do not have Karajan's other recording you mention.

Oddly enough, when I went down to hear Brian's Gothic at the Proms last summer, I stayed the night afterwards to hear Beethoven's Triple - in anticipation of Martha Argerich who I heard at the Proms a couple of years ago play Ravel's concerto. Sadly Ms. Argerich fell ill and, at the last moment, a  replacement pianist was found in the form of  Frank Braley. The other two soloists were the Capucon brothers Renauld and Gautier. All soloists were new to me. Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, with conductor Myung-Whun Chung.

A good, spirited performance - faultless given that the pianist was a last minute stand-in.

Mark (Partsong)

Thanks a lot, Torontonian. I was not aware of that recording at all, which proves that the "period performance" recordings have touched almost everything.

Unfortunately, in Amazon.com, they have two "used" items, starting from 35$!

Thanks, anyway! I'll wait for a possible new recording, maybe with Brautigam or Staier or Cooper. We'll see...

Parla

How many of us have heard this piece in public?   in over fifty years of concert-going I've heard it once only, with Laredo, Robinson and Kalichstein as wonderful soloists and - I think - the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.   It is very effective in the concert hall, and caused great excitement.   As for the Sargent recording, which I think was the first stereo issue, I bought it on a 10 inch disc in Germany on National Service, and played it to a professional musician I knew in Belsize Park some years later.   He waved a hand and dismissed it.  "Occasionally", he said, "one of them would try to do something, but it always petered out".   Sargent, he felt, was the culprit.   I demurred, so he got out Weingartner's 78s. I was astonished. Apart from the slow movement, which was a little approximate, Weingartner, the VPO, and his soloists were in quite a different league.   They still are.