Saturday, October 4, 2014

Mozart: Piano Concerto, K. 491 (Casadesus)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
I grew up on Robert Casadesus' recordings of the Mozart piano concertos, in his incomparable collaborations with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra from the 1950s and 1960s.  These were my introduction to these magical works, when I was a teenager, and ever since, this has seemed to me the right way to play Mozart.  So I was delighted to find recently the very first Mozart concerto recording made by the great French pianist (and although the pressing is not ideal, perhaps, being a postwar one, it does at least boast a Steinweiss album cover I hadn't encountered before):

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491
Robert Casadesus, pianist
Orchestre Symphonique de Paris conducted by Eugène Bigot
Recorded December 20 and 21, 1937

and

Mozart: Rondo in D Major, K. 485
Robert Casadesus, pianist
Recorded December 8, 1937

Columbia Masterworks set MM-356, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 86.04 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 58.56 MB)

5 comments:

  1. Hi Bryan - I am very pleased to have this! Casadesus and Szell were my introduction to Mozart concertos as well.

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  2. Many thanks Bryan for this one: even we don't have so many recordings under him, Bigot was one of the best French conductors.......Robert Casadesus remains the fantastic Mozartian that we know.
    Orchestre symphonique had wonderful specific French timbers as well.....a great post indeed.
    And the cover is amazing, as always with Steinweiss !!

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  3. What a pleasure to hear this recording. Thanks so much for the transfers and the beautifully detailed accompanying information.

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  4. gorgeous record Bryan, thank you. It sounds a bit dim; I tried applying a finely-graded EQ with some software I've been developing; would you care to hear it? cheers. Stuart

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