Customer Reviews

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata in F minor, Op. 57 (Appassionata): Three Performances of the Appassionata on Fortepianos and Piano of Viennese Design

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I purchased this CD after hearing it used as a DEMO for the VC-7 Bosendorfer Loudspeakers at the Bosendorfer Showroom In New York City. As soon as I got home I ordered a couple of copies for myself and friends. My main reason was to be able experience over and over again the wonderful expression demonstrated by Lambert Orkis while playing what I feel is the most incredible instrument in the world the BOSENDORFER IMPERIAL CONCERT GRAND. To hear this instrument is an unforgetable experience, and to hear Lambert play Beethoven on it is unforgetable 10 time over.!!!!!!!BRAVO

First, I have to admit a bias...I work for Bosendorfer. That being said, this is a wonderful recording through which to explore the development of the piano as a mechanical device and the impact of that development on composers and performers. The same composition, recorded on 3 different examples of the piano makers craft.

I also have greatly admired Lambert Orkis for many years. He is not really known as a solo player and listening to this controlled, intelligent, dynamic performance, one wonders why!

And yes, it is a great recording of the Imperial (Model 290). Bosendorfer is the last living vestige of the Viennese school of piano building and you really hear that influence in the tenor and treble as well as the clear bass that Bosendorfer, and especially the Imperial is known for. Pianos should have different tone between pp and ff, not just the same tone louder or softer. Most "standard" pianos don't have that characteristic. If they do, and this one does, it still takes a skilled player to bring that out..

This is such an outstanding CD in every way conceivable, from performance to sound, and even to basic conception. This might have been a mere gimmick, but thanks to Orkis' amazingly subtle and empirical performances it is anything but. The recorded sound helps this greatly. Many recordings of fortepianos were somehow made in the control booth, to highlight the odd side of the old instrument. The result was often that it sounded more like a piano in a saloon featured in an old Western. Here they have tried in every way to bring out only the musicality of the instrument, which means principally its lightness and shading. The "clankiness" of it is definitely downplayed. This allows Orkis' great insights to really resonate. It is even a dialogical matter between the three performances, because in fact the sound of the Bosendorfer Imperial Grand is clearly mollified or tweaked a bit so that relates to the others. Bosendorfers are definitely more vast sounding than it is here. But the result is to highlight a thrust of musicality. There seems to be a point to it all, and I don't think Orkis was at all revelatory about it in his comments inside. It seems rather to suggest a much more Apollonian character to the music than we usually think, especially because of the title. After listening to the CD straight through many times, which by the way is not the least bit boring in doing so that way, I am convinced that Apollo is the god to which the works makes obeisance.

This is one of the most valuable CDs I have bought in years. Although I may quibble a bit with Mr. Orkis' approach to the Appassionata, the opportunity to hear the same music played on three different Viennese pianos is extraordinary.

The Bosendorfer is for me the greatest piano in the world. The beautiful clarity of the bass combined with that sonority of a grand piano almost gives one the best of both worlds: fortepiano meets pianoforte. This could only happen with a Bosendorfer, which "sings" more than piano I have ever heard. The Appassionata has never sounded better and in many ways, listening to this CD track was like hearing this magnificent sonata for the first time.

But as fabulous as the Imperial 290 is as a concert instrument, the incredible thrill of this CD is to have side by side the performances played on fortepianos based on models of differing
periods. If one is to believe the liner notes, there was only about a decade separating the styles of the original Viennese pianos on which the two in the CD were modelled. The difference is amazing and speaks volumes about the rapid evolution of the piano in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. While my personal preference leans to the Wolf/Streicher sound, the later model has wonderful sonority and unusually good sustain.

You can read all night about the evolution of musical instruments. You can pull out one CD after another to make comparison of sound. But neither approach will let you hear so clearly the differences -- good and bad -- between fortepiano and pianoforte as well as this single CD. Listen to the CD all the way through. Then listen in uninterrupted succession to tracks 3, 6 and 9. There is nothing more to be said.