Menahem Pressler, Magdeburg Philharmonic – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 23 & 27 (Live) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:17:54 minutes | 765 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CAvi-music
“…..Pressler has played Mozart’s piano concertos with such frequency that they can be reckoned among the works that have occupied him the most in his life. Fortunately, a wish that Pressler and the musicians of the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra had been having for many years finally came true: in May and December 2016, Pressler performed as a soloist in his home town. In May he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in B Flat Major K595, and in December he played the Piano Concerto in A Major K488. On the subject of Mozart, he remarks: “In Mozart there are no ‘empty’ passages. Musicians often just ‘play through’ a passage because they can play it well, and they are satisfied with that. However, if the interpretation of a passage has no content, I become adamant. I know it’s hard to phrase everything correctly. But I am still as critical as I ever was. First of all toward myself, then toward my co-performers.” Fortunately these concert performances in May and December 2016 were recorded. For a performer who had then reached the age of 92 (and who celebrated his 93rd birthday on the occasion of the second Magdeburg concert on 16 December 2016), one can hear that those aforementioned daily hours of practice have truly been worth the effort. Pressler, the experienced musician, phrases the piano part with unmatched nuance. In the framework of moderately chosen tempi he masters every technical hurdle in each of these two masterpieces. Most of all, one can immediately tell that we are dealing with a pianist who not only knows very note of these concertos, but who has made each of them his own. Although Pressler has recently made several recordings on CD, these Mozart concerto recordings might be the last recorded testimony of one of the great performers of our time……”
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Menahem Pressler – Mozart: Piano Sonatas Nos. 11, 17 & 18 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:33 minutes | 938 MB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © La Dolce Volta
This is the pianist Menahem Pressler’s second disc for La Dolce Volta, recorded at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in September 2014. Here we meet a Mozart bathed in total serenity, as if freed from all earthly contingencies and tensions, gently singing of his state of grace, with a wonderfully tender touch. An interpretation deeply moving in its very simplicity, its sheer tranquil poetry, brimming with love and affection. Here is a miraculous disc by a humble servant of music at the peak of his inspiration.
Menahem Pressler, founding member and pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio, has established himself among the world’s most distinguished and honored musicians, with a career that spans almost six decades. Now, at 91 years old, he continues to captivate audiences throughout the world as performer and pedagogue, performing solo and chamber music recitals to great critical acclaim while maintaining a dedicated and robust teaching career.
“It’s a genuine mission to fulfil the task of recording the complete Mozart sonatas. A mission that constantly has me asking questions of myself, and which sometimes has me feeling quite dizzy: can I do it? Am I right to? And yet I feel a literal attraction for these sonatas. They’re an unending source of wonder to me. It’s a joy to record them, and even an inner necessity.”
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Menahem Pressler – Menahem Pressler Performs Mozart (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:41 minutes | 623 MB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © La Dolce Volta
In this second volume of his Mozart cycle, Menahem Pressler invests the music with a serenity and tenderness rarely attained in this repertory. He allows himself time to breathe, immersing himself in his sonority and giving priority to variety of colour, underlining changes of harmony, and the shaping of each phrase.
He sweeps us away on an exhilarating journey, nurtured by a lifetime devoted to seeking the essence of music.
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Menahem Pressler – Clair de lune (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:35 minutes | 1003 MB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Born 16 December 1923, today Menahem Pressler is, without a shadow of a doubt, the king of pianists, just as Mieczysław Horszowski was in the 1980s. Founder of the Beaux-Arts Trio, great and much-overlooked performer of French music, in his thirties he laid down some of the greatest recordings of Debussy (La Boîte à joujoux, Estampes, Suite bergamasque, Arabesques, La plus que lente, Rêverie) of the 1950s, for the American label MGM Records (but he also made several LPs dedicated to Prokofiev which are now completely forgotten, and the Histoires by Jacques Ibert…). Today, for Deutsche Grammophon, he has cast his mind back to that time when, standing on American soil, everything still lay ahead of him; and he has written a beautiful programme, largely centred around Debussy with the composer’s greatest hits (Arabesques, Clair de lunefrom the Suite bergamasque, several Préludes from Livre I such as La fille aux cheveux de lin), finishing with Fauré (Barcarolle No. 6) and finally Ravel ( Pavane pour une infante défunte, Oiseaux tristes). Pressler is keeping alive another piano tradition, with his sound, his sense of style, and quite simply his spirit. His Clair de lune is full of this spirit, without ever falling into mawkishness, or losing its tone of softly-spoken confidence. But for pity’s sake, Universal Music: re-release all of Pressler’s solo pieces for MGM Records. Bringing back this inestimable and now-completely-inaccessible legacy would be a truly fitting tribute to this great artist.
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