One of the most grown-up review sites around

2020
54,416 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here

     
  
 

 

International mailing


 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All APR reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

 

 

Availability
Pristine Classical

Mark Hambourg
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor Op.37 (1803) [31:38]
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor Op.23 (1875) [31:50]
Mark Hambourg (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra/Malcolm Sargent (Beethoven)
Royal Albert Hall Orchestra/Landon Ronald (Tchaikovsky)
rec. November 1929 (Beethoven) and September 1926 (Tchaikovsky), Kingsway Hall, London
PRISTINE AUDIO PASC223 [63:28]

Experience Classicsonline

Let me start with a collateral pleasure that this disc brings with it, and that’s the increasing representation on CD of the conductorial art of Landon Ronald. Historic Records has been going great guns on his behalf, and their restorations of his major Tchaikovsky symphonic recordings have been of real merit. So too is this collaboration with Mark Hambourg in the Piano Concerto, a traversal that has never before been transferred either to LP or CD.

Engineer Mark Obert-Thorn has utilised US Victor ‘Orthoponic’ pressings for this – whereas he used standard domestic HMVs for the companion Beethoven concerto. The Victors have more presence than the HMVs and have been transferred at a somewhat higher level as well. The 1926 early electric recording copes as well as could be expected with the thunderous octave flourishes and manages a good frequency response with regard to the basses of the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra. The strings of the band are on typically expressive and romantic form, though their portamenti are somewhat more predictably placed here than could often be the case with Ronald’s Tchaikovsky, where he varied this flavoursome and expected device with alluring intelligence. The winds are highly effective in their own way. Hambourg plays with authority and control. As Obert-Thorn notes, he does indulge some interesting narrative paragraphs in his slowing for the waltz passage in the slow movement, which is rightly accommodated by Ronald, and which brings out the balletic implications of the writing. One can explicitly contrast this with another Russian performer, Sapelnikoff, who had earlier recorded the concerto with the Aeolian Orchestra and Stanley Chapple for Vocalion and who is the more rectitudinous here. Hambourg’s performance however is characterful, powerfully personalised (with some textual emendations) and echt romantic.

Hambourg only recorded two commercially released concerto performances. The other was Beethoven’s C minor Concerto in 1929 which staked HMVs electric marker after the first ever recording, William Murdoch’s acoustic reading for Columbia with Hamilton Harty, had been superseded by the new technology. Are we going to get that one soon? The conductor for Hambourg here was Malcolm Sargent, already well versed in studio matters by now. The pianist’s opening statements are laced with rubato, and this fluid approach to metrics is a constant of his performance, a pre-Schnabelian one if you will, though that’s a reductive idea in itself. It’s only in retrospect that Schnabel has come to dominate the early concerto and sonata discography. How different things would have been, for instance, had Rachmaninoff accepted the offer to record the sonatas for Victor. Or had Lamond recorded more of them. Nevertheless this fluid approach to structure is complemented by a lovely tone, and by the use of Moscheles’s cadenza; Hambourg knew Moscheles’s son, Felix, which perhaps explains it. He plays it certainly with marvellous élan. The refinement and poetic phrasing of the slow movement, played with treble-based filigree, explains in part Hambourg’s position as one of the most elegant and admirable of pianists of his time. And it chimes with his view of the concerto as a whole, which is light, bright and the opposite of stentorian – though some of the brass figures in the finale do tend toward that effect. Hambourg’s runs are not wholly accurate but who’s counting.

This performance has been released before by Pearl [GEMM 9147] back in 1995. That one had far more pops and clicks than this newer entrant but it also had more presence. Obert-Thorn has had to trade presence for a lower level smoother ride. I ran my own 78 set alongside both these transfers and rather wished that he could have gone for a touch more room presence and allowed a bit more surface noise from the admittedly rather noisy HMVs.

Still, this is fine work on behalf of Hambourg, whose major statements stand as lasting examples of his too-often overlooked art.

Jonathan Woolf

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Pat and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.