Piano Concerto No. 3 in E major, Sz. 119, BB 127 (completed by Tibor Serly)
Symphony No. 1 in D major ("Titan")
This CD of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major may find defenders for its enjoyable Salzburg Festival performances, but others will be nonplussed by the mono AAD sound, which is decently cleaned up but still disheartening for a live recording from 1964. Pianist Annie Fischer is vigorous and eloquent in Bartók's Concerto, and the Vienna Philharmonic under Georg Solti is, simply put, magnificent. Yet the recording makes the performers seem distant and indistinct, as if the microphone placement ...
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This CD of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major may find defenders for its enjoyable Salzburg Festival performances, but others will be nonplussed by the mono AAD sound, which is decently cleaned up but still disheartening for a live recording from 1964. Pianist Annie Fischer is vigorous and eloquent in Bartók's Concerto, and the Vienna Philharmonic under Georg Solti is, simply put, magnificent. Yet the recording makes the performers seem distant and indistinct, as if the microphone placement was far back behind the audience. Remastering has removed tape hiss and brought some details to the fore, but the the sound overall is two-dimensional. The recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 also suffers from limited audio resources, and the Vienna Philharmonic's usually warm strings and rich brass seem colder and weaker in the mix. The woodwinds, however, remain distinct, perhaps due to some acoustic anomaly that carries their timbres over the others. Solti's interpretation seems...
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