Boulanger, Fauré, Hahn

[FBerwald]

An upcoming Sony release worth mentioning...



Hahn - Piano Concerto, pianos transcription of A Chloris, L'heure exquise
Fauré - Ballade for Piano & Orchestra, Fantaisie for piano & orchestra
Boulanger - Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra

William Youn (piano), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Valentin Uryupin


I just love the Hahn Concerto and from the sound clips, it seems to be played at a more relaxed tempo than the famous Hyperion RPC recording.

[Alan Howe]

A nice release, to be sure.

[tuatara442442]

This was already available for streaming. Really weird.
The Boulanger Fantaisie varie used here is the new 2022 edition. Makes it the CD Premiere of the new edition (though live concert with this new edition has been held). The publisher says that after comparing with the orginial score used in Pugno performances, there are 4 cuts restored (and original dynamic indications), presumably obvious ones. I found out 3 changes (if not all of them restored cuts) after rough comparison.

Also, RPC's Hahn PC Toccata is lax. I listened to the Maguelone one. The Toccata in this recording seems to be faster than that in the Maguelone one, though haven't listened to the latter for a long time.

If the Faure Ballade could have been substituted by the Tailleferre one, I would be more excited. I'm not a big fan of the concertante version of the Faure Ballade. The strings that relieves some of the piano's melodies just made some originally glistening and agile piano passages duller and clumsier. Considering that the original proposer of the orchestration is Liszt, I think the "dullification" is somewhat justified, because he dared to add a totally unneccessary introduction when "concertantizing" Weber's l'Hilarité...(just kidding, the one responsible for it of course is Faure himself!)