Great Recordings You've Never Heard Of: Raff's Piano Concerto and Ode to Spring

[Alan Howe]

Tra and Antonioli are in a different league.

But not, to mix metaphors, on Hurwitz's radar 

[Mark Thomas]

All the more surprising as Hurwitz clearly has a good relationship with Naxos and Grand Piano, the label by whom Tra's recording is published, is part of the Naxos stable.

[Alan Howe]

Exactly. He could even have broadcast some tasty excerpts!

[FBerwald]

How is the recording by Frank Cooper? I have seen it floating about on youtube, but for some reason, I have never checked it out.

[Alan Howe]

Here is Cooper's recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh4RyOuwhaM

[Mark Thomas]

I've more than a soft spot for Cooper's rendition and it's good to be reminded of it. It has a rather old-fashioned and reserved feel to it, which works especially well in the slow movement, but it doesn't lack fireworks. He really is an excellent soloist. In the LP days, when the only choice was Cooper or Ponti, I always preferred his subtlety over Ponti's brash showmanship. What the recording does lack, though, is an orchestra to match him.

[Ilja]

As an experiment, I subjected the Cooper recording to a treatment that I believe is similar to what the sound engineers did to have the orchestra sound fuller in the Henselt-Bronsart Paul Wee recording we discussed recently. If you're interested, the result is here.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, Ilja, but hasn't this boosted the piano too?

[Ilja]

Yes it did to some extent; I didn't have the advantage of a separate track. However, as the orchestra was typically further in the background, it mostly boosted the softer, orchestral parts.

[Mark Thomas]

Well, no criticism of your illustration but, like the Wee, once one knows what has been done, it doesn't make the orchestral sound deeper or richer, just louder.

[Ilja]

Yup.

[eschiss1]

Definitely not a recording I'd never heard of - I vaguely recall even seeing it in the recordings bins. (I have definite ideas what "recording I've never heard of" means- like the actual premiere recording of a (mid-20th-century) symphony, decades before what I thought its premiere recording was. That one I'd definitely never heard of.)