Sep

7

Menahem Pressler played this concert in his 95th year:

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 | Menahem Pressler, Gulbenkian Orchestra & Leo Hussain

Adam Grimes responds:

Thank you. That's lovely. Mozart always requires such precision. That was the second concerto I learned! Near and dear to my heart.

Laurel Kenner writes:

A very great concerto, a very great pianist.

Even monsters have been touched by this haunting music. A vignette re Mozart’s K488 and Stalin, from LA Phil program notes:

In his final years Stalin became addicted to listening to music on the radio, on one occasion a performance of Mozart’s K. 488, played by Maria Yudina, a particular favorite of his – surprisingly, since she was as celebrated for her non-conforming political views as for her interpretations of Shostakovich (of whom she was a close friend), Bach, and Mozart. Instead of playing encores at her recitals, she would read poems by banned Russian writers and recite the sayings of Russian Orthodox clerics: rather than hiding her beliefs, she trumpeted them, so to speak.

Stalin asked Moscow Radio for a copy of Yudina’s K. 488 and they agreed to send it immediately. The problem was that this was a live performance and it had not been recorded. The radio people called Yudina and hastily assembled an orchestra late that night, delivering the recording to Stalin the following day. Volkov relates Shostakovich’s words: “Soon after [Stalin heard the recording] Yudina received an envelope with 20,000 rubles… To which she responded: ‘I thank you, Joseph Vissarionovich… I will pray for you day and night and that the Lord forgive you your great sins…’” The pianist is said to have donated the 20,000 rubles to her church.

Oddly, Yudina was never censured nor imprisoned for any of her renegade acts and her career continued until shortly before her death in 1970. “They [who?] say [according to Shostakovich/Volkov] that her recording of the Mozart concerto was on the record player when the leader was found dead in his dacha [in 1953]. It was the last thing he had listened to.”

Whether one believes all, parts, or none of the story, Yudina did make the recording.

Like Adam, I also played this concerto, written by Mozart at 30. Perhaps you need to be 95 to do it justice. Bravo, Menahem Pressler.

[ One from a list of her performances: Maria Yudina plays Bach Toccata in C minor, BWV 911 - live 1950 -Ed. ]

Laurel Kenner adds:

Yudina's Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue is killer.


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