Another great Living Stereo album on SACD, featuring the superb pianism of Rubinstein in three often-performed, shorter piano concertos, recorded originally in 1956 and 1958. The Liszt concerto – it’s the one with that famous triangle in the last movement – was recorded in only two channels. While it does a good job creating a phantom center channel piano soloist, the first two concertos deliver a much more involving audiophile experience with their very spatially-specific piano right there in front of the orchestra. In fact, the opening of the Saint-Saens would be a good demo of the pleasures of three discrete channels in front. It opens with only the piano dead center and almost nothing on the left and right channels. And the piano sounds normal-sized too. Then the orchestra enters on both sides and in back of the piano, with thrilling effect on a properly-set up system.
[I noted a different timbre on the center channel than on the left and right, and checked it with some pink noise test signals. The drivers in my center channel speakers are identical to those in the left and right, so that shouldn’t be the cause. Finally I realized I had to replace the tubes on that channel some time ago and I used the inferior original Chinese tubes the monoblock amp came with. Obviously I need to order a pair of the same tubes I have in the other two channels to match up properly. And if you have a center channel speaker of a different manufacturer than your left and right, your appreciation of these three-channel SACDs may be greatly compromised.]
Saint-Saens’ First Piano Concerto of 1868 launched a whole new idiom of French piano concertos. As with Rachmaninoff and many other composers of piano concertos, Saint-Saens was a wizard of the keyboard (and unlike Rachmaninoff equally adept at the pipe organ). So virtuoso passages abound in this very tuneful work. Another pianist-composer said of the concerto, “It begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach” – a good summary indeed. The 13-minute Franck piano concerto (though not titled that) is more straightforward and optimistic in character than many of his other works. It has a double subject with six variations.
– John Sunier
