On The Hunt

Started by Todd, August 30, 2019, 03:07:42 PM

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André


Hobby

I'm ploughing my way through as many of the top tier as I can access - 16/20 on Qobuz, plus several selected others. Grown to love the Hunt in the process and to better appreciate the variety and gradually discriminating which ones I really like.
Couple of queries. I would have expected the Rosen recording to have been included. Assume Fazil Say and Minsoo Sohn of your upper second tier were not yet available at the time. I am mildly puzzled that the Michael Houstoun Morrison Trust recording ended up very well down the second tier despite the 'superb' accolade.
It's also interesting that several of your top tier rankings came from the third tier in the complete rankings - Kovachevich at 3rd (possibly if same set), Mejoueva at 10th, Jumppanen at 19 and Wehr  at 20. Indeed several from your overall fourth tier made into the Second tier for the Hunt - Nakamichi at 26th, Ashkenazy, Zhao and Yokoyoma. Also the other way round that both the Kempff mono and Stereo recordings are in third tier on Hunt but Top tier on complete.
I realise you have always stressed that there are nuggets in almost all complete sets and this bears that out.

Todd

I included only recordings I owned at the time.  Say and Sohn were not yet out, and Rosen is not in my collection for this sonata.

Almost no pianist rates top tier across the board for every sonata, hence the variability.  Kovacevich, for instance, brutalizes most of the early sonatas, but delivers very fine middle and great late sonatas.  (It's also worth mentioning again that the one time I heard him in person, he sounded much different than on record, and nowhere near as hard hitting.)  Mejoueva and Wehr are at their best where vitality pays off, etc.  There are even more extreme variances in some other works.  I am not a fan of Kuerti's complete cycle, yet were to do the same type of comparison for 31/1, he would be in the top five, or probably top three.  (It's also worth noting that I like all of his subsequent Beethoven recordings much more than his cycle, and he, too, sounds different in person.)

I almost certainly will never re-listen to all complete cycles all the way through.  Some of the lower echelon sets will forever rely on memory alone.
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