[Click to enlarge]
Agustin Anievas, piano. EMI, recorded in London, June 1975
Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Praga, recorded live in Prague, Feb. 21, 1960 (mono)
by Ken
Sometimes when I go back to an old "Sunday Classics" post I take heart in the realization that if there's nothing else to be said for it, there's the music. It happened again this week with a May 2012 post I happened to be looking at, "A vision for the future in Beethoven's last piano sonata," for a reason I'll explain in a moment.
After a tease of Beethoven's immensely compact and cryptic yet approachable Op. 111 Piano Sonata, we heard the second of Chopin's four miraculously dramatic ballades, much as we just did above. (In fact, as regards the performances, exactly as we just did above. The score page is new, though. And in the original post I did include this compact note about the two performances: "first a lovely performance by Agustin Anievas, then a more searching performance by Sviatoslav Richter (from the same Prague broadcast from which we recently heard the First Ballade).")
NOW LET ME EXPLAIN ABOUT THAT 2012 POST
