2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the International Piano Archives at Maryland (IPAM) and in honor of this celebration, we’ll be posting piano related questions on the chalkboard in the MSPAL Gallery space throughout this academic year. We invite you to respond to these questions, and we’ll post regular replies from IPAM’s curator, Donald Manildi.
Question #2: "What is your favorite concerto for piano and orchestra?"
Thanks to all who responded. Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky: perennial favorites, especially for competitions. No surprise here. Available for listening in IPAM and MSPAL: Rachmaninoff himself playing all his concertos: request MCD 5345 and MCD 5367. Other famous Rachmaninoff interpreters: Vladimir Horowitz: request MCD 14657 Benno Moiseiwitsch: request MCD 13874. Van Cliburn: request MCD 13672 and MCD 15800 (with Tchaikovsky). Vladimir Ashkenazy: request IPAM / MDECCA 289 466 375-2. Also: Tchaikovsky No.1 recorded by Vassily Sapellnikoff, who played the work in the 1880s with Tchaikovsky conducting. IPAM / MAPR APR 6016. Surprises: no mention of any concerto by Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Grieg, Liszt, or Prokofiev (!?). Also Sprach Zarathustra: for some strange reason Richard Strauss failed to include a piano part in this heavily-scored, purely orchestral work. How remiss of him! Perhaps the respondent could provide us with the urgently-needed piano solo.
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