Review: Byron Janis' Marvelous Mercury Masters
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2023
- Byron Janis: The Mercury Masters (9 CDs plus 1 Blu-ray disc). Works by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Liszt, Schumann, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Chopin, Mozart, others. Various Conductors and Orchestras (Mercury Living Presence)
- Hudba
Thank you so much for your kind shout-out about my booklet essay and for my earlier review of the Byron Janis RCA box. I was fortunately to spend a lovely afternoon interviewing Byron Janis in person for these booklet notes, with his artist wife Maria Cooper present.Very special people, indeed! And I'm happy that the Leningrad recital was included, because the fabulous Copland Sonata performance preserves Janis in a work that he otherwise did not record.
Very sad to learn of his passing, grateful to have his commercial releases. Thanks for your booklet notes in this set.
The playing is fabulous, but the engineering is often downright astonishing. Listening to the Prokofiev 3rd, my jaws dropped at the sheer transparency, balance, and richness of the sound. Few recordings made today sound as good. An amazing testament to the artistry of the husband-wife team of Wilma Cozart Fine and Robert Fine.
Byron Janis wrote several interesting and entertaining columns for the Wall Street Journal. Here's a passage from one called "In Praise of Infidelity": "In 1960, I opened the cultural exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and brought Aaron Copland's Piano Sonata to play. Never having performed it before, I wanted to play it for the composer first. On arriving at his home, I found him tinkering with one of its passages and said, "Mr. Copland, I notice you are playing forte and you have marked it piano in the score." He turned to me grinning mischievously and said, "Ah, but that was 10 years ago!"
Excellent , thank you for taking the time to post that!
I always loved the audiophile quality of Mercury. Having some Janis-LPs I'm excited about the CD-Box. Thank you Dave, by far the best channel for classical music.
His Totentanz with Reiner is one of my favorite performances of one of my favorite works. I guess that is RCA, not Mercury, so not in this box. But Janis sure knew how to play the daylights out of stuff that really needs to get the daylights played out of it.
Great to know the Garrick Ohlsson Beethoven concertos are in line for a review. He's such a magnificent pianist, with mastery over a very wide-ranging repertoire--for which reason I think he can often be taken for granted. In any case, I'll be interested to hear your response to his performance of these core works.
Dave. Amazing video.
I love that mlp is releasing this stuff again. In this way.
Of course as we all know, all of this stuff is in cube 1 and it is timeless. I return to it often.
This stuff is true core collector item level. At least for me.
The Rach 1 and Prokofiev 3 with janis and Kondrashin are still my favourite recordings of both works. Virtually ideal I feel. I love his recording of the Pictures too.
Thank you for highlighting this box. Janis was my introduction to serious piano music. I tried to collect all his work. Don't think he ever made a really bad recording!
I'm glad you mentioned Garrick Ohlsson. I find him to be quite fascinating.
The Mercury recording of Rachmaninoff 2 Maestro Janis did in Northrup Auditorium here in Minneapolis is a wonderful legacy for our city and my own favorite performance of the piece.
I forgot to ask: how does the sound quality compare to previous incarnations of these recordings? I ask because I always thought the CD masterings a little too bright (and needing a bit more bass) for my taste.
Does anyone know what is new in this box compared to the three Mercury Living Presence boxes?
Wow, this is great and in just the right time. Is this a new release? I didn't know it existed. Thanks a lot, as always!
I forgot to ask: how does the sound quality compare to previous incarnations of these recordings? I ask because I always thought the CD masterings a little too bright (and needing a bit more bass) for my taste.
I don't know if was brought up in needed reissues. The total Mercury recordings. I would buy it in a heartbeat.
For someone who already bought the three Mercury Living Presence "cubes", these artist-specific boxes (Paray, Dorati, Bachauer, now Janis, etc.) are so duplicative that they simply don't make my wishlist against the many other CDs calling for my money. I wish Mercury/UMG would just issue a 4th box (might be longer than the cubes) with the remainder of the Mercury classical catalog not in the first three cubes. I'd buy that in a heartbeat. (And reissue the first three cubes for those who still want them.)
Totally agree! There was nothing Byron Janis recorded that was not convincing. He was a Horowitz's student but succeeded by not imitating him. Just ignore the mystical thinking in his biography Chopin and Beyond, and one will not go wrong.
I have a couple of the teenage Byron Janis, then Byron Yanks, NBC Symphony broadcasts in the 40s. He was formidable at age 15 as later.
Are the recordings remastered? You don’t tell us.
Then the answer is "no."
@@DavesClassicalGuide Have since discovered that the accompanying blurb claims that they have been remastered: "These recordings have been lovingly restored from the original master tapes and remastered at 24bit 192kHz by mastering engineer Tom Fine and presented in original sleeves."
I loved Janis's recordings, but hated watching him. Too damn soulful.
That is an eternal problem for us with many pianists; how we HEAR their performance as opposed to how they physically perform it...