Khatchaturian: Piano Concerto (Levant)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

There was a request for this recording at Buster's blog recently, after he posted some of Oscar Levant's incomparable Gershwin playing. I dug around and found this nice early LP copy, complete with one of Steinweiss' more zany cover designs. This is one of three early recordings listed of Khatchaturian's wild and wacky piano concerto - the others are by Moura Lympany with Fistoulari on English Decca (the first to be issued), and William Kapell with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony (Victor). Of these, I find Levant's the most convincing, for he cuts loose more than the others do, playing it with all the zest and panache that he brought to everything he touched:

Khatchaturian: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1935)
Oscar Levant with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York
conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos
Recorded January 3, 1950
Columbia ML-4288, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 88.45 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 58.03 MB)

This recording was also issued as a 78 set (Columbia MM-905), and I am sorry to say I don't have that, nor have I ever seen it anywhere. It contains, as a filler, Levant's rarest recording, apparently unissued in any other form - Rachmaninoff's Prelude in D Minor, Op. 23, No. 3. It is so rare that it is on the wants list of the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland - although it would be easy to miss this, since they do not identify it as the filler for this Khatchaturian Concerto. If you have it, they would like to hear from you!

Sanromá and the Boston Pops

Puerto Rico-born Jesús Maria Sanromá (1902-1984) was for 20 years the official pianist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  While in this capacity, he recorded six concerted works for piano and orchestra with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler, one each year between 1935 and 1940.  This is the offering from 1938, the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, taken from a slightly worn copy of Victor set AM-780.  The concerto takes 5 sides of the three records; on the last side is a solo recording by Sanromá of two of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words":

Link (FLAC files, 52.04 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.98 MB)

This might be my last post for a couple of weeks, as I have been asked to perform the solo harpsichord part of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with a local community orchestra on Oct. 24, and preparing this will be taking up most of my free time between now and then.  So to tide everybody over, here are links to all the Arthur Fiedler-Boston Pops recordings I had transferred and posted previously to RMCR, one of them another of the Sanromá piano concertos:

Gluck-Mottl: Ballet Suite No. 1
Recorded March 24, 1940
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-787 (2 records)
Link (FLAC file, 39.29 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 21.07 MB)

Khatchaturian: Masquerade Suite (Waltz, Nocturne, Mazurka, Romance, Galop)
Recorded June 18, 1947
RCA Victor set DM-1166 (2 records)
Link (FLAC file, 43.13 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 20.92 MB)

MacDowell: Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 23 (with Jesús Maria Sanromá)
and
Ibert: Divertissement
Recorded July 1, 1936
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-324 (5 records)
Link (FLAC files, 89.35 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 46.28 MB)

Rossini-Britten: Matinées Musicales (March, Nocturne, Waltz, Pantomime, Moto perpetuo)
and
Rossini-Britten: Soirées Musicales - Tarantella
Recorded June 21, 1947
RCA Victor set DM-1204 (3 10-inch records)
Link (FLAC files, 38.9 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 19.2 MB)

And, one with the Fiedler Sinfonietta (a chamber orchestra composed of Boston Symphony players);

Telemann: Don Quichotte Suite
Recorded March 21, 1940
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-945 (2 records)
Link (FLAC file, 40.43 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 16.86 MB)