Rachmaninov Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring 

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 in. C minor, Op. 18; Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30. Abbey Simon, piano; Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; Leonard Slatkin, conductor. VOX-NX-3014CD

This new release is another in the “Audiophile Edition” series of releases from the old Vox catalog that the folks at Naxos are bringing back into circulation. (For a review of some previous releases in this series, please see here.)  Many experienced music lovers of a certain age are probably familiar with Vox, a budget label that produced some real gems back in the day, such as the Vox Box of Ravel’s orchestral music featuring Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting the Minnesota Orchestra. Although Vox was a budget label, the sound quality on some of their releases was excellent (the main drawback was the questionable quality of their vinyl pressings), and this Ravel set, which was recorded by Elite Recordings (engineer Marc Aubort and producer Joanna Nickrenz), had beguiling sound. Those performances and recordings still hold up as you can see from reviews of subsequent digital rereleases of the Ravel recordings, such as a review from our own John Puccio that you can read here, or an article at the PS Audio website that provides some insight into the recording process, which you can find here.

Appearing on the back cover of the new “Audiophile Edition” releases is a highlighted statement stating that “The recordings of American orchestras produced for VOX by the legendary Elite Recordings team of Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be among the very finest sounding orchestral recordings ever made.”For this new series of reissues from the Vox catalog, the folks at Naxos have begun to pull some of those  tapes out from the vaults and carefully prepare these CDs for release, the end product of their labors being what they describe as “new192 kHz / 24-bit ultra high definition transcriptions of the original Elite Recordings analogue master tapes.”

 

This new recording, the original Vox version of which was released in 1979, features the American pianist Abbey Simon (1910-2019). Who is perhaps best known to classical music fans for his recording of the complete piano works of Maurice Ravel, also undertaken for Vox, a  set considered by many to be one of the finest ever recorded. Simon is accompanied on this recording by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the American conductor Leonard Slatkin (b.1944), who served as the orchestra’s Music Director from 1979 through 1996 and is now its Conductor Laureate. Their performance is lyrical and assured. There is excitement, but not hysteria. I found it quite enjoyable, although perhaps lacking that last bit of drama.

 

I thought it would be interesting to do a quick comparison of the Simon/Slatkin with another older recording that had long served as one of my favorites, largely because of its feeling of energy and excitement – the famous 1965 recording by pianist Earl Wild (1915-2010) with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jascha Horenstein (1898-1793), which was originally captured on analog tape by the legendary recording team of engineer Kenneth Wilkinson and producer Charles Gerhardt for RCA and later digitally remastered by Ralph Couzens and released in 1990 as Chandos CD CHAN 6507. (A quick aside: Over the years, I have owned and/or listened to many recordings of both concertos on both LP and CD. The Wild/Horenstein is not necessarily my absolute favorite – I’m not sure what is – but I always enjoyed the sheer excitement of the playing; moreover, the fact that Wild spent the last years of his life in Columbus, Ohio, the area where I moved in the late 1970s to attend graduate school and remain to this day probably swayed me toward his recording). 

 

As I began comparing the two recordings, a couple of things were immediately apparent: the Chandos CD was mastered several dB louder than the Vox disc, and the Wild performances were faster and more dramatic-sounding, especially in Concerto No. 3. Although the Wild CD has long been a favorite of mine, I found myself preferring the smoother approach of Simon; however; I plan to keep both recordings, just as there are some mornings when I prefer my caffeinated rich chocolate breakfast shake, but other mornings find me reaching for the noncaffeinated creamy chocolate version.

 As I pointed out in my review of the previous releases in this series, although the vintage analog recording lacks that last bit of transparency and definition that can be attained by modern digital recording technologies, Marc Aubort Elite Recordings knew where best to place their microphones and they did the very best with the technology of their day. In addition, advances in digital technology mean that it is not surprising that this restoration of a vintage analog master yields slightly superior (in the sense of less bright-sounding in brass and massed strings) sound quality for the Vox as opposed to the Chandos release. This release is another fine one in this new series; let’s hope there are many more to come!