Having given special attention to Anton Bruckner in writing about the CDs collected in Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition, I can now shift attention to nineteenth-century composers more familiar to many (if not most) readers. The composer that receives the most attention is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky with Emil Gilels as soloist in all three of that composer’s piano concertos. The CD with the last of those concertos, Opus 75 in E-flat major, also includes the Opus 35 violin concerto in D major with soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann. On that CD he also performs Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 19 (first) violin concerto in D major.
1882 photograph of Antonín Dvořák (photographer unknown, from the Gallica Digital Library, public domain)
The other concerto in this set is Johannes Brahms’ Opus 83 (second) piano concerto in B-flat major. This is an “international” performance with Sviatoslav Richter at the keyboard and Maazel conducting the Orchestre de Paris. The only other CD in this category involves the Berliner Philharmoniker playing all of the Slavonic Dances compositions by Antonín Dvořák, Opus 46 and Opus 72, both consisting of eight of the dances.
I have to confess that the Slavonic Dances are some of the earliest works that I encountered in childhood. It was only much later that I learned about the four-hand version; and I had the good fortune to work through all of them with a colleague. As a result, listening to the orchestral version brought back many pleasant memories! That said, I was most impressed by the thoroughness of repertoire when it came to the Tchaikovsky concertos. Such thoroughness is not as present for any of the other composers in this collection!
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