Customer Reviews

Beethoven: Complete Works for Piano & Cello

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I got this set after hearing Ms. Dinnerstein's outstanding CD of the Goldberg Variations and Mr. Bailey's excellent recording of the Bach cello suites. I did not feel I needed another set of these pieces since I have the sumptuous recordings of Rostropovich and Richter, and Fournier and Schnabel. But this set is distinguished by the joie de vivre of the musicians, their energy and entire commitment to the music. It is impossible not to be delighted by the quality and enthusiasm of the performances. There is a warmth and intimacy achieved by the pair that is comparatively rare. The result is spirited performances, as joyous as they are excellent. Mr. Bailey, who comes across as somewhat brooding and intense when alone, partakes of the shared happiness in this set and his performance gains by the collaboration. The sound is also very fine, and the price is unquestionably reasonable. I can only look forward to hearing more performances by both of these gifted musicians.

I'm not a professional musician just a music lover who prefers large ensembles but I heard this duo on the radio and they bowled me over. Immediately downloaded MP3. They are dynamite together. To my ear the playing is perfect and you feel you are right inside the instruments. You can't help but admire perfection and passion/energy. Ms Dinnerstein has justifiably become quite famious. I went an got the Goldberg variations too. Very happy with both.

We attended a concert in Tallahassee, FL, with Zuill Bailey and loved his sound, style and musicality. We bought one CD from the concert then came home and ordered others we found on Amazon.com. We have other cellist CD's of Beethoven's works but enjoy this interpretation more than others. Since we are amateur cellists this gives us something to strive for and listening helps us learn the solo repertoire.

Knowing the playing of Simone Dinnerstein, I couldn't imagine that this disk wouldn't be wonderful. The music completely lives up to expectations of both musicians. I would highly recommend it for any lover of piano music, cello music, or chamber music. Or for anyone curious about traditional concert music.

To be fair and square, I didn't expect to like this performance a lot. I haven't been pleased with Simone Dinnerstein's two Bach recordings, and I wouldn't list Zuill Bailey's recording of the Bach cello suites among the recommended choices either. I ordered this recording of the 5 piano/cello sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven out of peripheral professional curiosity. Honestly I was hoping I wouldn't need to give it less than four stars, to avoid the angry comments that Dinnerstein's fans will heap on this review as soon as I post it. And if it were not for the exaggerated attention Dinnerstein has been receiving from Oprah Winfrey and other media fame-makers, I'd probably just shelf this 2-CD set and forget it.

But it's awfully bad. It's simply not main stage concert level, in interpretation or technique. Many passages are brutally overplayed - coarse, bumptious, pounded on the keys, gouged on the strings - and outright ugly. Throughout all five sonatas, rather extreme dynamics just 'happen' without rhyme or reason, without a sense of sequential progression, loud just for the loudness, soft without poignancy. Bailey's cello tone is consistently harsh and growly, and though he strive for contrasts of dynamics, he seldom varies his bowing enough to exploit the timbres of the instrument expressively. He's an old-time up-the-middle fullback, grinding for short yardage. Dinnerstein's pianism is either stubbornly eccentric or completely sporadic; her touch is alternately plinky and poundy, mostly the latter. Her sostenuto is sometimes so overladen that relatively uncomplicated chords turn to mudslides. It's all crash and jumble, without delicacy or vivacity, without Viennese elegance or Beethoven's Flemish wit.

The young violin virtuoso and composer Louis Spohr visited Beethoven in 1808 and heard the hearing-impaired composer playing his own piano. Beethoven's piano, Spohr wrote, was badly out of tune, and Beethoven's playing was harsh, clamorous, and careless. Dinnerstein's piano, a 1903 Hamburg Steinway, is properly tuned, but otherwise I'm wryly tempted to think she's attempting to recreate what Spohr heard, in a parody of "historically informed performance practice". Otherwise, there's absolutely nothing "historically informed" about this recording. Beethoven would have needed to be stone deaf to thump out his own music with such furious insensitivity. It's not 'passionate', friends; it's just loud. And both performers are careless. Listen to the first flurries of fast notes at the beginning of the Allegro of Sonata #1 (track 2); those passages are smudged! Fumbled! Yet Dinnerstein CAN play cleanly when she tries. And listen to Bailey's attempts at double stops on his cello in the Scherzo of Sonata 3; those 'babies' are out! of! tune!

The first three sonatas are all littered with moments of technical clumsiness. The two late sonatas of the 1815 Opus 102 -- recorded a year later, I think -- took me by surprise at first. They exhibit many fewer technical blotches than those on CD1. As I listened, however, I began to feel that Dinnerstein and Bailey had no overarching concepts of the works, no sense of their wholeness and unity. I found that I couldn't follow the game, couldn't track the development, and my mind began to wander. I don't listen to music like this to let my mind trip about! I listen intently, not doing anything else except perhaps posture exercises, not chatting or reading, just listening respectfully and carefully. And I want the same intensity of focus from the performers. Dinnerstein and Bailey don't offer that.

Superb performance, excellent sound quality, good price, fast shipping. For Beethoven fans ... this is a must!

Virgil Thomson criticized Vladimir Horowitz as per the subject line above. (Horowitz's reply: So was Goya.) But I am not talking about Vladimir Horowitz or either of the fine artists in this recording. I am talking about Giordano Bruno and his foolish, intemperate, two-star review. I am responding with a review of my own instead of a comment, because I want an opportunity to give this recording the five-star rating it deserves, and because I do include independent opinions from other sources, which are not simply a reaction to his.

You have to wonder, first of all, why he would waste his valuable time on this recording, feeling as he does about Simone Dinnerstein. He says he was prompted by a "peripheral professional curiosity." The truth is a bit more complicated. He attempted to discredit this recording in another thread, without having heard it, and based only on the Amazon sound samples. He must have realized how foolish that looked, so he committed to listening to the entire recording and writing a fair and objective review. He even acknowledged--gasp!--that he's occasionally wrong in his judgment. But of course there was no chance of a fair and objective review from him. He had made up his mind before these discs even reached his CD player. And a man whose narcissism virtually leaps from the screen doesn't really believe he can be wrong.

So now we have this hatchet job of a review--see everybody, I was right all along--replete with its oh-so-cute subject line and the reviewer's usual, pompous irrelevancies. (Did Spohr really visit Beethoven in 1808? Gee, I always thought it was 1807.) But I am the first to acknowledge that Giordano Bruno seems to know a bit about music, and he does turn a pretty phrase. To someone not familiar this recording, his words might have the ring of verisimilitude.

But let's take a look at some of his comments about the recording: It's simply bad and not main stage concert level; many passages are brutally overplayed and downright ugly; rather extreme dynamics just happen without rhyme or reason; Bailey's cello tone is consistently harsh and growly; Dinnerstein's pianism is either stubbornly eccentric or completely sporadic, and her sostenuto is sometimes so overladen that relatively uncomplicated chords turn to mudslides (whatever any of that gibberish means).

I am the one who took Giordano Bruno to task for offering an opinion based on sound samples alone. However, Amazon has provided 20 sound samples from the recording, and, if the problems are as numerous and egregious as Giordano Bruno suggests, one would expect to hear evidence of at least some of them in the samples. I invite any interested reader to audition the samples and judge for him- or herself. I suspect that few listeners will hear any of what he is talking about (which is not always clear). Would any half-competent producer at a major label sign off on performances with such devastating problems?

Let us also consider how this recording has been received in other quarters--apart, and far removed, from the Oprah show. We have the four previous reviewers, all of whom were highly positive in their comments. WETA Radio, the classical FM station serving the Washington, D.C. area, made it their new recording of the week. Radio station WFMT in Chicago, arguably the country's most sophisticated fine arts station, made it a featured new release as well. The reviewer in Fanfare Magazine, our leading classical review publication, strongly recommended the recording, and you can read his review in its entirely on the Arkiv Music website (sorry, Amazon). The San Francisco Classical Voice said that in phrasing and emphasis, dramatic vigor and empathic responsiveness, cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Simone Dinnerstein deliver throughout. Reviewing a 2009 concert performance of three of the sonatas, The New York Times noted that the artists have played together for a decade, and their impassioned styles are ideally matched. Yes, the individual can be more prescient than the multitude, but this multitude can probably match Giordano Bruno in musical sophistication, has no ax to grind, and represents disparate and independent musical organizations and individuals. So who are you going to believe?

These are big-boned, large-scale performances, as the Fanfare reviewer put it. If you respond to that approach, do not bypass this recording because of a single, biased review in which words are used for effect rather than substance. Yes, I do personally own it, and can vouch for all of the positive comments I have cited. This one makes it unnecessary to keep my other recordings of these works.

The music is sublime, but the CDs are defective. The first copy I received skipped repeatedly on track #s 8 and 10 of CD#1; I sent it back to Amazon and the replacement copy was also defective, skipping big time on track #7 of CD#1. I never made it to CD#2 in either case. If the record companies cannot understand why sales of CDs are plummeting, perhaps they and their retailers - hello Amazon! - should consider the shoddy quality of the actual CDs.