Gregor Piatigorsky - The Art Of The Cello 36 Cd

Gregor Piatigorsky

Sony Classical Collects the Great Cellist’s Complete RCA and Columbia RecordingsHe has been called the greatest string player of all time. His playing, which brought tears to the eyes of the immortal Fritz Kreisler, was noted for its exceptional technical control and wide range of expression. When Richard Strauss heard Gregor Piatigorsky perform with the Berlin Philharmonic, he exclaimed, “Finally I have heard my Don Quixote as I imagined him.” Sony Classical is pleased to announce a definitive 36-CD set collecting Piatigorsky’s celebrated RCA and American Columbia recordings for the first time in a single edition. Most of the performances on the first five discs, recorded between 1940 and 1947 have never before been transferred from the original analogue master discs and tapes for release on CD. For this release, 48 recordings have been transferred for the first time from the original analog master discs and tapes using 24 bit / 192 kHz technology, more than 20 works make their first appearance on CD in this edition.Born in 1903 in what is now Dnipro, Ukraine, Piatigorsky studied with his father before entering the Moscow Conservatory. When only 15, he was invited to join Moscow’s foremost string quartet, the Lenin Quartet, and the same year he was appointed principal cellist at the Bolshoi. In 1921, he left the USSR to study in Leipzig with the renowned Julius Klengel, and in 1924 Furtwängler engaged him as principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic. A few years later, the cellist moved on to become a concert soloist.During the prime years of his long and extraordinarily successful career, on both sides of the Atlantic, Piatigorsky’s interpretations were documented by Columbia (in the 1940s) and RCA (in the 50s and 60s). Space permits the mention of no more than highlights from this new Sony box. In 1953, a little over a decade after the 78-rpm Columbia version of Don Quixote with Reiner in Pittsburgh, Piatigorsky revisited Strauss’s masterwork with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony, but now in an LP recording with the benefit of RCA’s “New Orthophonic High Fidelity”. Gramophone recently called it “one of the most touching and dramatic accounts ever recorded”.From 1957 come two indispensable interpretations. In the marvelous Cello Concerto that Sir William Walton composed for him, “Piatigorsky’s magnificent playing … is almost beyond praise. It was he who commissioned this concerto in the first place, and he gives the impression of loving every note of it” (Gramophone), and in a vibrant reading of Bloch’s Schelomo, “Piatigorsky approaches the score in terms of its brilliance and possibilities for exciting virtuosity, playing with juicy emotionalism and gorgeous tone” (High Fidelity). His famous version of the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1960 “possesses a strength, humanity and recreative fervour that never pall” (Gramophone).Piatigorsky formed chamber partnerships with many outstanding musicians of the era – for example, with Artur Schnabel (for HMV) and Vladimir Horowitz; with Nathan Milstein (the 1951 Philadelphia Brahms Double Concerto recorded under Reiner is in this collection, as is Piatigorsky’s 1960 stereo version with Jascha Heifetz); and with Arthur Rubinstein (in this set: performances ranging from 1950 – Ravel, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky piano trios, with Heifetz on violin – to the Brahms Cello Sonatas from 1966).Most important of all, was the collaboration with Heifetz, his closest friend. In 1961, after finally settling in Los Angeles (Piatigorsky had moved to the US two decades earlier and become a citizen in 1942), he and Heifetz established a famous chamber series. Featuring such distinguished instrumentalists as pianist Leonard Pennario and viola player William Primrose, it led to the “landmark” (High Fidelity) recordings of Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvořák and Franck included in this collection, remastered from the original analogue tapes in 24-bit/192 kHz and DSD® quality. Gramophone’s reviewer has summed up their well-known vir

Price: $51.98