1964 Prokofieff Leinsdorf Friedman Hollander Violin Concerto Vinyl LP Record VG+

Description: Yes we combine shipping for multiple purchases.Add multiple items to your cart and the combined shipping total will automatically be calculated. 1964 Prokofieff Leinsdorf Friedman Hollander Violin Concerto Vinyl LP Record VG+ Record Grade per Goldmine Standard: VG+ Prokofieff / Erich Leinsdorf, Erick Friedman, Lorin Hollander, Boston Symphony Orchestra – Violin Concerto No. 1 & Piano Concerto No. 5 TjLxuring the fifteen years between the time Prokofieff wrotehis first concerto for the violin in 1917 and his fifth for thepiano in 1932, the Russian composer’s suave way of pairing asingle instrument to a full orchestra tightened into a recogniz-ably personal technique. Interplay between the soloist and theensemble for its own sweet sake became compressed into a kindof rigorous colloquy in which there was little room for eitherto ramble around in and make virtuoso effects. The witty veinProkofieff almost always worked ran deeper, and what oncesounded puckish by nature became sardonic by design. As themanner changed, the quality varied, but over those years itdid not diminish.The Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra is among thefirst written against the tradition that a concerto must be ashowpiece for the solo instrument. This one is of the samevintage as the “Classical” Symphony, and just about as sunnyand lyric and accessible. Compared to it the Concerto No. 5for Piano and Orchestra is more like a Concerto for Orchestrawith Piano. It is at least a study in composition by calculation,perhaps a very early example of what the complaining wasabout when Prokofieff came into official disrepute in 1948 for“formalistic tendencies,” i. e., for writing headier stuff thanPeter and the Wolf. At first the Concerto can seem confounding,but by the fourth or fifth attentive hearing the parts makeshapes and the finished structure they form reveals itself assuperb.When Erich Leinsdorf, late in 1962, engaged Erick Friedmanand Lorin Hollander to be the Boston Symphony Orchestra’ssoloists in these Prokofieff concertos, neither young artist couldplay his solo part. Friedman thinks he was about eight yearsold when he heard Josef Szigeti’s performance of the ViolinConcerto, and the recording Szigeti made is the first set ofrecords Friedman can remember owning. For several years hehad planned to get the piece into his performing repertoire,but most of his time had been spent on the Beethoven, Brahms,Mendelssohn, Bruch and the other more popular concertos hewas booked to play. It took the definite date with the Bostoniansto set him hard at work on the Prokofieff.Once Friedman started studying the Concerto, he spent atleast a thousand hours with his Stradivarius under his chin andProkofieff’s score propped in front of him. All that left himconvinced that the piece has more inherent difficulties than thePaganini D Major, though not the kind of difficulties listenerswill be dazzled by if the violinist overcomes them. For Fried-man, the hardest one to overcome is a passage about halfwaythrough the third movement which he thinks takes inordinatecare to get in tune—a test made twice as hard by the string-plucking and bow-bouncing ahead of it which can always becounted on to leave the instrument itself out of tune. Thetreacherous passage amounts only to a fast two octaves up theF major scale and back down again, and it comes at four-and-a-half minutes after the start of the movement. Listen for it.It does not dazzle, but it is played in tune.Lorin Hollander was working up the composer’s Third PianoConcerto when Leinsdorf asked him to get at the Fifth. Thatwas ten months’ notice for a performance at Tanglewood inthe summer of 196,3, and the pianist admits to needing all ofit to get the piece in shape. He was touring around the countryplaying recitals and between times straining over Prokofieffin strange cities on borrowed pianos. He listened carefully toother recordings of the Fifth, decided not to be intimidated,then went back to work—far more of it than he had put intolearning any other concerto. Hollander spent about four daysbattling with the six hideously difficult bars of the first move-ment beginning roughly thirty seconds after the start of theconcerto. Memorizing the toccata movement—the third —took him three months, even though playing it on this recordtakes only a minute and forty-nine seconds.Six hours every day at the piano is the ordinary Hollanderpractice regimen, but he found himself ending up a lot of thesesessions wondering when he would be filled with a sense ofconfidence about the Prokofieff Fifth. When that finally got tohim it was about two a.m. one morning in the ballroom of theHollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Fie had been practicing thereafter the dancers had gone, and it was then that he realizedwhat the whole piece sounds like—where, in a sense, it is onthe piano. From then on the living was relatively easy. Heknew the Prokofieff Fifth, not just the notes, but the concerto’sover-all shape and sound which from then on seemed asnatural as the C major scale.Notes by Joseph RoddyMr. Roddy has written on musical subjects for a number of publications, includingHigh Fidelity, The New Yorker, Harpers and Horizon.Mono LM-2732Stereo LSC-2732PROKOFIEFFViolin Concerto No. I Erick FriedmanPiano Concerto No. 5 Lorin HollanderBoston Symphony Orchestra • Erich Leinsdorf, Music DirectorProduced by Richard Mohr • Recording Engineers: Anthony Salvatore and Lewis LaytonEnclosed: A textpiece by John N. Burk,historian of the Boston SymphonyOrchestra and annotator of its concertbulletin, on the Boston Symphony andthe music of ProkofiefJ. lp1475

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Location: Kingsport, Tennessee

End Time: 2024-09-30T20:42:32.000Z

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