Schumann: Kreisleriana; Gesänge der Frühe; Allegro in B minor [Import]

Robert Schumann (Composer), Maurizio Pollini (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Maurizio Pollini
• Composer: Robert Schumann
• Audio CD (April 23, 2002)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Dg Imports
• ASIN: B00005YX6F
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,434 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid Schumann From Pollini, December 29, 2002

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Schumann: Kreisleriana; Gesänge der Frühe; Allegro in B minor (Audio CD)

This new recording from Maurizio Pollini certainly ranks among his best, and is also a personal favorite. Here he seems to infuse better a bit more lyricism and warmth than I have heard him on some of his recent recordings. His exquisite playing of Schumann's "Kreisleriana" is among the most vibrant, dynamic performances I've heard; it could easily be the best. But the others, especially the Allegro in B minor are just as fine. It's a shame you have to pay a premium price for less than 50 minutes worth of music, but in Pollini's hands, it is a price worth paying.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully clear Kreisleriana, June 16, 2009

By 

Russell I. Burnett (Newark, DE, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Schumann: Kreisleriana; Gesänge der Frühe; Allegro in B minor (Audio CD)

My first exposure to Kreisleriana was via the 1985 Horowitz recording, which many had raved about. I wasn't particularly impressed by the piece, but I went ahead and purchased the Pollini recording based purely on past experience with Pollini and Schumann. I've been thrilled with that decision. Pollini's interpretation quickly raised Kreisleriana to masterpiece status in my library.

Out of curiosity I listened to the Argerich recording as well, and while I prefer it to Horowitz, it still lacks the clarity that Pollini provides. I absolutely agree with a previous reviewer who called this one of Pollini's finest recordings.

5 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Schumann always arduous,technique alone wont save your soul, April 5, 2005

By 

scarecrow "scarecrow" (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Schumann: Kreisleriana; Gesänge der Frühe; Allegro in B minor (Audio CD)

Schumann is always difficult to interpret if you by chance stray too far into the melancholic nostalgic realm all you get is unwanted/wonted sap,grist for the mill of foregetting what your poor soul is experiencing. If you bring some sort of madness,some place you inhabit at some extremity of desire that Lacan might anlayze then you stand a chance of making some fascinating readings as Michelangeli has so admirably done,some years ago. I always sense in Pollini that he brings his affinity for pure timbre,all that modern repertoire that he played laways in his early career when he was not an international star yet, the love of sound for its own sake is what attracts Pollini to music; ignoring what the music might be saying, as if he's telling us ". . . that will happen anyway, no sense overdoing something that is already there". Here he lets his immpecable technique come to his aid, so at first we are overwhelmed by the scope the magnificent power of blazing resonance, then we look for content, and in Schumann I;m afraid content is sometimes forsakened for whatever else. Schumann has vacuous areas, dead areas that simply lay there on the page,and but he saved Romanticism by proclaiming that the intropsective, the private,the Lied, the moments of reflections by oneself are as important as the collective philosophic symphonic proportions that Beethoven had stolen. Pollini came late to all the romantics,his Brahms and Schubert as well. I think he has had time to ponder what to do with this literature, and this is one marvelous example.