Rubinstein 3rd & 4th Piano Sonatas from Naxos

[John Boyer]

Naxos is releasing a new recording of the 3rd and 4th Rubinstein piano sonatas.

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/han-chen-rubinstein-klaviersonaten-nr-3-4/hnum/12640267

Han Chen recorded the first two sonatas for Naxos a number of years ago.

[semloh]

Thanks, John. It'll need to be first class to compete with Leslie Howard's set on Hyperion. Maybe the recording quality will be a factor in its favour, given the 1989 (?) date of the Hyperions. I've not played them in a while so can't recall.

[eschiss1]

For sonata no.4 there's also van Paassen's 1987(?) recording on Attacca, though I haven't yet heard it.

Howard's set was in fact "recorded on 17, 18 December 1980 (Sonatas 1,3); 24, 25 Oct. 1981 (Sonatas 2, 4)."

[John Boyer]

I have the van Paassen. It's OK, but it has the enormous disadvantage of having been given a single track for the entire 40 minutes or so of the sonata. I have no idea what they were thinking of at Attacca when they did that.  It does, however, have the only recording I know of Rubinstein's nearly 24 minute Yankee Doodle Variations.

I think the sound on the Howard is just fine; 1981 was hardly the era of Edison cylinders.  I recently listened to Reiner's 1955 "Living Stereo" recording of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra and I was amazed at the clarity and and vividness of the sound.

[Wheesht]

I have the van Paassen. It's OK, but it has the enormous disadvantage of having been given a single track for the entire 40 minutes or so of the sonata. I have no idea what they were thinking of at Attacca when they did that.

I don't suppose it's anything to do with the label being called Attaca 

[Mark Thomas]

Oh, well done!! 

[eschiss1]

That joke had to follow without pause

[eschiss1]

There's also, besides the complete sets, a separate recording of the 1st sonata by Jouni Somero on FC-Records recorded in 2010

[John Boyer]

I have that recording, too. Technically it is couple steps down from Leslie Howard. You can hear the effort.

The recording does include some nice smaller pieces of Rubinstein that you don't hear very often, but in the familiar Rêve Angélique he makes a glaring error that should never have made it into the final edit. Not sure what the story is with that.

He has also recorded nine (!) volumes of the piano works of Bortkiewicz, if you're into that sort of thing,

[eschiss1]

Only if he's done them better than your description of his Rubinstein. As I recall much of Bortkiewicz's piano music is otherwise available only in Thadani's synthesized renditions, so this is a good thing if his renditions should be good...
Edit: a quick check of Discogs informs me of Klaas Trapman's 2018 recording of that composer's complete piano works on Grand Piano, a fair amount from Coombs on Hyperion from 2008, and more recordings otherwise than I'd thought in the last few years, so never mind that last statement, I wasn't up to speed

[tuatara442442]

Klaas Trapman's is far from complete. A glaring example is that he completely jumped 12 Études nouvelles (the only complete set of which is the one by Somero but who is not a very good pianist, comparing to the few recorded by Katsaris)

[eschiss1]

And unfortunately the only Bortkiewicz releases expected over the next 8 months or so are, it seems, a new recording of the 2nd piano concerto, and a reissue of Hyperion recordings of the concertos in a Big Box.

[tuatara442442]

Another new PC2 so fast?! I remember there is a new one not very long ago, on a CD called Manu sinistra with the soloist Illia Ovcharenko

[eschiss1]

My mistake, same one, didn't notice that the date on it was March 2026.