MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £13.50 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Vladimir Sofronitsky plays at the Scriabin Museum - Volume 6
Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Piano Sonata No.21 in B flat D960 (1828) [34:05]
Fryderyk CHOPIN (1810-1849)
Eight Mazurkas; Op.41 No.2 [1:57]: Op.33 No.4 [4:52]: Op.33 No.3 [1:09]: Op.50 No.3 [4:41]: Op.41 No.1 [2:36]: Op.63 No.2 [1:29]: Op.30 No.4 [3:13]: Op.30 No.3 [2:30]
Two Preludes; Op.28 No.16 [1:10]: Op.28 No.18 [1:11]
Four Waltzes; Op.69 No.2 [3:05]: Op.70 No.1 [1:59]: Op.70 No.2 [2;22]: Op.70 No.3 [3:22]
Alexander SCRIABIN (1872-1915)
Mazurkas; Op.40 No.2 [1:23]: Op.25 No.3 [1:44]
Waltz Op.38 [5:36]
Vladimir Sofronitsky (piano)
rec. 7 March 1956, live, Scriabin Museum, Moscow
VISTA VERA VVCD-00224 [78:55]

Experience Classicsonline


Another volume marking Vladimir Sofronitsky’s recitals at the Scriabin Museum has emerged from Vista Vera’s factory line of releases devoted to this pianist. This time it’s a single date - 7 March 1956. The composers represented are Schubert, Chopin and Scriabin, a mainstream choice for this fabled executant whose position as Scriabin’s son-in-law is dented only by the facts that he never met the composer, and that he married his daughter many years after Scriabin’s death.
 
There have been at least three problems regarding Sofronitsky’s legacy on disc; first, the poor quality of some of the surviving recordings; secondly, the poor quality of the pianos, especially at the Scriabin Museum; and thirdly, the confusing duplication of repertoire and dating thereof. This all adds up to a bit of a nightmare for those who are not, as most of us are not, experts in his discography.
 
This March 1956 recital contains seeds of all these problems. The recording quality is amateur level, and not meant for commercial release; the piano is out-of-tune, albeit not as disastrously as was sometimes the case at the museum. What is just-about-tolerable in a select audience as part of the Sofronitsky coterie, is a different matter when listened to fifty plus years later on commercial disc; and Sofronitsky gave recitals of all this music many times during his career.
 
His Schubert still divides opinion. But I’d rather listen to him playing Schubert than to another venerated Russian contemporary, Maria Yudina. Indeed I probably prefer the limited evidence of his Schubert to Richter’s, heretical though that might sound. He adopts none of the distension and over-reverential slowness that these other pianists do, and the music-making sounds more healthily direct for it. True, the splintery, compressed sound doesn’t aid his case but the powerful, indeed passionate curve of his performance of B flat sonata is exciting, and moving, to hear. The Chopin Mazurkas become compromised by the piano to an even greater extent than the Schubert - I assume that the disc faithfully reproduces the recital running-order, which seems to be borne out by the fact that the piano goes increasingly out of tune. Op.41 No.2 has its legato turn tinkly, and the refined treble of Op.50 No.3 would be even more so but for the state of the piano. He plays two Preludes; Op.28 No.16 lacks a codified rhythm, so sounds loose and even out of control at points. Rubinstein always took this even faster - but much more firmly. By the time we arrive at the Waltzes from Op.69 and 70, the piano has tuned honky-tonk. One can just about gauge the plasticity and beauty of Sofronitsky’s phrasing of Scriabin’s Op.40 No.2 Mazurka, despite the piano and recording problems. In any case he recorded these three Scriabin pieces in better conditions elsewhere.
 
This makes a difficult choice for collectors. For others this is too laden with problems.
 
Jonathan Woolf
 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.