(Classical/Piano) Great Pianists: Emil Gilels (Гилельс) Early Recordings, Vol.1 Debussy, Godowsky, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Rameau, Ravel, Schumann, Smetana - 2008, APE (image+.cue) lossless

EMIL GILELS
Early Recordings Vol.1
NAXOS 8.111350
RAMEAU
Suite for harpsichord in E minor
01. X: La villageoise [1951]
02. V: Le rappel des oiseaux [1951]
GODOWSKY
03. Renaissance, Book 2: Gigue in E major, after Loeillet [1935]
MOZART
04-06. Piano Sonata No.14 in C minor, K.457 [1950]
SCHUMANN
07. Toccata in C, Op.7 [1935]
08. Fantasiestucke, Op.12, No.7: Traumes Wirren [1937]
09. Spanisches Liederspiel - Der Kontrabandiste (arr. C.Tausig) [1935]
MENDELSSOHN
10. 3 Fantaisies ou caprices, Op.16 no.2 - Scherzo [1940]
11. Lieder ohne Worte, Book 3, Op. 38, No. 18 & 6 [1947]
SMETANA
12. Czech Dances, Book 1, No.2 - Polka in A minor [1950]
13. Czech Dances, Book 1, No.3 - Polka in F major [1950]
DEBUSSY
14. Suite bergamasque: III - Clair de lune [1946]
15. Nocturnes: No.2: Fetes (arr. Borwick) [1937]
RAVEL
Le Tombeau de Couperin
16. I - Prelude [1950]
17. III - Forlane [1950]
18. VI - Toccata [1950]
Исполнители:
Emil Gilels, piano

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
Отчёт EAC об извлечении, выполненном 17. октября 2008, 17:59
EMIL GILELS / Early Recordings Vol.1
Дисковод: SONY DVD RW AW-G170A Adapter: 0 ID: 0
Режим чтения : Достоверность
Использование точного потока : Да
Отключение кэша аудио : Да
Использование указателей C2 : Нет
Коррекция смещения при чтении : 48
Способность читать области Lead-in и Lead-out : Нет
Заполнение пропущенных сэмплов тишиной : Да
Удаление блоков с тишиной в начале и конце : Нет
При вычислениях CRC использовались нулевые сэмплы : Нет
Интерфейс : Встроенный Win32-интерфейс для Win NT/2000
Выходной формат : Внутренние WAV-операции
Формат сэмплов : 44.100 Гц; 16 бит; стерео
TOC извлечённого CD
Трек | Старт | Длительность | Начальный сектор | Конечный сектор
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0:00.00 | 2:09.59 | 0 | 9733
2 | 2:09.59 | 2:39.68 | 9734 | 21726
3 | 4:49.52 | 2:06.20 | 21727 | 31196
4 | 6:55.72 | 8:19.12 | 31197 | 68633
5 | 15:15.09 | 9:20.42 | 68634 | 110675
6 | 24:35.51 | 4:47.00 | 110676 | 132200
7 | 29:22.51 | 4:44.27 | 132201 | 153527
8 | 34:07.03 | 2:19.52 | 153528 | 164004
9 | 36:26.55 | 1:48.04 | 164005 | 172108
10 | 38:14.59 | 2:19.07 | 172109 | 182540
11 | 40:33.66 | 3:11.74 | 182541 | 196939
12 | 43:45.65 | 2:20.40 | 196940 | 207479
13 | 46:06.30 | 2:44.30 | 207480 | 219809
14 | 48:50.60 | 4:32.73 | 219810 | 240282
15 | 53:23.58 | 6:08.10 | 240283 | 267892
16 | 59:31.68 | 3:10.00 | 267893 | 282142
17 | 62:41.68 | 6:53.04 | 282143 | 313121
18 | 69:34.72 | 4:07.03 | 313122 | 331649
Характеристики диапазона извлечения и сообщения об ошибках
Выбранный диапазон
Имя файла C:\EMIL GILELS\EMIL GILELS - Early Recordings Vol.1.wav
Пиковый уровень 100.0 %
Качество диапазона 100.0 %
CRC копии B6FAFD27
Копирование... OK
Ошибок не произошло
Конец отчёта

About this Recording
One of the greatest Russian pianists of the twentieth century, Emil Gilels was born in Odessa in 1916. Although his parents were not professional musicians, his father was an amateur musician and all the children played instruments. At the age of six Emil was taken by his half-sister to begin piano lessons with Yakov Tkach, a pupil of Raoul Pugno. In 1929 Bertha Reingbald, a teacher from the Institute of Music and Drama in Odessa, heard the twelve-year old Gilels’s début and was greatly impressed with the young boy. She became his teacher and, although he was too young to enter the National Competition of the Ukraine in Kharkov, Gilels’s playing at the time of that competition resulted in a scholarship in 1931 from the Ukrainian government. Reingbald then prepared Gilels for the All- Union Competition for Performing Musicians which he won in 1933 at the age of sixteen and immediately took on many concert engagements for which he was not adequately prepared, as he had not had time to develop his repertoire. He returned to Odessa and Reingbald staying with her until the summer of 1935. It can be said that Tkach provided a purely technical training whilst Reingbald instilled the musical attributes; Gilels said of her, ‘At that time, in fact, she was my musical mother’. In 1935 after graduating in Odessa, Gilels moved to Moscow to study with Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory.
In 1936 Gilels came second to Yakov Flier in the International Piano Competition in Vienna, and two years later won the prestigious Ysaÿe Competition in Brussels. The outbreak of World War II prevented his American début in 1939, and the first time he played outside the Soviet Union after the War was in Czechoslovakia in 1948, then in Poland, and he first played in the West in 1951 in Italy.
The recordings on this compact disc were made in the USSR and all come from the first stage of Gilels’s career. It should be noted that it is difficult to date recordings made in the USSR from this period with any accuracy as access to recording session logs and discographical material is limited. Gilels’s first recordings were made in 1935 and the arrangement of the Gigue by Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, which comes from Leopold Godowsky’s Renaisssance Suite written between 1906 and 1909, immediately shows the immense power the young Gilels had at the keyboard. He had performed this work at the time of the National Competition of the Ukraine in Kharkov in 1931 and he also played Godowsky’s arrangement of the Fugue and Presto from the Violin Sonata in G minor by Bach during the 1930s. Also from the 1935 sessions come the recordings of Schumann’s Der Kontrabandiste arranged by Carl Tausig (once a popular work, it was also recorded by Josef Lhevinne in 1921, Naxos 8.110681) and the Toccata Op. 7 in which Gilels displays an already secure and solid technique: he played it at his final graduation examination concert in Odessa in November 1935.
The next recording sessions took place in 1937 when Gilels recorded more Schumann—a feather-light Traumes Wirren from Fantasiestücke Op. 12, and some French music including Fêtes (from the orchestral work Nocturnes) by Debussy in an arrangement for solo piano by English pianist Leonard Borwick (1868–1925) who also made a transcription of the same composer’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Gilels played this solo version of Fêtes at a concert in Moscow in December 1938, and in 1940 played the arrangement for two pianos by Ravel with Jacob Zak in Leningrad. When speaking of French music in Russia in the 1930s Gilels said, ‘At that time the Impressionists in Odessa were very modern, almost the last word in music. In addition to this the music was difficult to obtain. I was only able to borrow the music of Ravel’s Toccata for a single night. My sister and my father spent that whole night copying it out, and from this copy I learned Ravel’s Toccata; it was with this piece that I won the first prize in Moscow in 1933.’ Gilels recorded three movements from Ravel’s suite Le Tombeau de Couperin in 1950 including the Toccata, and they can be heard here along with Debussy’s Clair de lune from 1946.
Gilels played very little of Mozart’s music in his early career. He explained that when he was young, ‘…we did not play the Brahms concertos in Russia. And even with Neuhaus we played very little Brahms, Schubert or Mozart…He also liked Debussy very much…’ It would appear that the first recording Gilels made of a Mozart piano sonata was the Sonata in C minor K. 457 heard here. It is muscular and incisive in the outer movements and full-toned in the slow movement. At this time he also programmed the Piano Sonata in B flat K. 570 at his concerts.
Gilels had played Mendelssohn’s Scherzo in E minor Op. 16 No. 2 at his first public concert in June 1929 in Odessa at the age of twelve. The 1940 recording made when he was 24 has a scintillating clarity. The Polkas by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana did not feature on Gilels’s programmes before 1950 and these works possibly entered his repertoire as a result of his first tour of Czechoslovakia in 1948.
Gilels played some of the keyboard works of Rameau throughout his career. At his first examination concert in 1924 at eight years of age he played Tambourin and at the All-Union Competition for Performing Musicians in 1933 he played a group of pieces. The 1951 recording of two of them heard here shows stylistic performing influences from Godowsky and the great pianists of Gilels’s youth, yet these are perfectly valid performances, both poetic and musically suited to the piano.
Gilels was a pianist in the mould of the Russian great players that stemmed from Anton Rubinstein. His playing, especially in his youth, was fiery, volatile and exciting, and even late in his career still retained the grandeur and sweep of a great master in the Russian tradition. Gilels died in Moscow in 1985.
Thanks to Judith Raynor
© 2008 Jonathan Summers
Reviews
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb International, December 2008
APR has an ‘early years’ Gilels disc to its credit - see review – one that takes in a selection of recordings made between 1935 and 1955. There is some overlap but the substantial works are not duplicated which means that the Mozart sonata K457 is on this Naxos entrant whereas APR has two big sonata statements in the form of Beethoven’s Op.2 No. 3 and Prokofiev’s Sonata No.2 in D minor. Non-specialists who wish to acquire examples of Gilels’s earliest 1935 recordings will therefore be faced with a dilemma with regard to the Loeillet-Godowsky and all the three Schumanns. I can help with recommendations. The APR preserves and attempts to ameliorate as far as is possible the hollow and disappointing Moscow recording but can’t do much with it. The Naxos can. It sounds very, very much better—clarity, definition (you can hear the bass definition at long last) and what sounds like comprehensive re-pitching ensure that these are now the transfers of choice for this body of recordings.
The Loeillet-Godowsky is a charming sliver of elemental pianism, dispatched with bravura confidence and control. Its companion, the Schumann-Tausig Der Kontrabandiste is similarly vital and engrossing a performance. The Toccata was made in the same year, a reading of headlong dynamism and speed. The performance is not flattered by the sonics but that’s no impediment to the coruscating virtuosity of the playing. For my taste it’s a rather unrelenting and steamrollering performance that misses the playfulness at the music’s core but there’s no doubting the digital mastery on show.
Much better is the Mozart sonata. Even though on his own admission he played relatively little Mozart in his early days—Neuhaus, his teacher, didn’t push the composer – this is a warmly aerated and textured, fully romanticised reading. His second movement rubati are especially noteworthy as is Gilels’s thoroughly masculine sense of the sonata’s projection.
The Mendelssohn brace offers a light-fingered Scherzo and a warmly consoling Song without Words. The Rameau is fashioned with verdantly romantic generosity whilst the Smetana dances were a souvenir of his encounter with them on a recent concert tour of Czechoslovakia. Unlike Mozart Neuhaus did teach Debussy. There’s an example of Clair de lune—auspicious —and English pianist Leonard Borwick’s manful arrangement of Fêtes for solo piano. This was a piece that Gilels was playing in concert frequently around 1937, the time of the recording. The three movements from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin reinforce the Gallic affiliations—though these, incomplete though the recording was, followed later in 1950.
There are good notes as usual from Jonathan Summers. The repertoire selection is equally good and the superior transfers ensure a warm welcome.
David Denton
David's Review Corner, October 2008
Outside of his native Russia, the pianist Emil Gilels remained largely unknown until he his was in his thirties, his younger years now charted in a series of important recordings. Making his debut at the age of twelve as a child prodigy, he was shielded from a premature career by his astute mentors, eventually releasing him at nineteen to take the major prize in a series of major competitions. The cultural divide that separated the Soviet Union from the West prevented free travel, Gilels only allowed to accept engagements outside of the Communist countries in the 1950s. Though he was then hailed as one of the outstanding pianists of his time, he could only find a place among a whole new generation of virtuosos who had emerged in the meantime. The present release covers those years behind the Iron Curtain, the earliest coming from 1935 when he was nineteen and anxious to demonstrate his agile fingers. His Schumann Toccata and Spanisches Liederspiel are a joy to hear, but two years later he was almost pushing his technique a little too far in a virtuoso transcription of Debussy’s Fetes from the orchestral work, Nocturnes. The disc takes us through the 78 era to the early 1950 Melodiya LPs, and a beautiful and unaffected account of Mozart’s Fourteenth Piano Sonata. But my particular favourite are the two movements from Rameau’s E minor Suite for Harpsichord, the first time I have really enjoyed Baroque music played on a modern piano. Godowsky, Mendelssohn and Smetana feature in the disc, three superbly played sections from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin to a memorable conclusion. The sound is amazingly good for its age, Ward Marston performing another supreme piece of restoration.