The Seattle Recital (2016)

In the early 1960s, with the first wave of Russian virtuosi continuing to make waves in the West, extraordinary recitals spread beyond the usual American concert centers of New York and Boston. This recording reproduces an Emil Gilels concert given in Seattle in December of 1964, and it captures the pianist's tremendous energy and the energy of the audience's response as well. The Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 ("Waldstein") was one of Gilels' trademarks. You might want this release just for the ... Read More

In the early 1960s, with the first wave of Russian virtuosi continuing to make waves in the West, extraordinary recitals spread beyond the usual American concert centers of New York and Boston. This recording reproduces an Emil Gilels concert given in Seattle in December of 1964, and it captures the pianist's tremendous energy and the energy of the audience's response as well. The Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 ("Waldstein") was one of Gilels' trademarks. You might want this release just for the performance of that work alone, with its surging double-octave scales in the finale letting the audience know that it's in for something special. There are many other highlights: Prokofiev that seems perfectly idiomatic, a stirring "Danse Russe" of Stravinsky (another Gilels trademark), a group of Debussy's Images that is hardly conventional, but seems inexorably swept along by the whirlwind of the whole. Everything comes to rest with an Alexander Siloti arrangement of a Bach prelude. Gilels... Read Less