Géza Anda, Philharmonia Orchestra & Karl Böhm – Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15 (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Géza Anda, Philharmonia Orchestra & Karl Böhm – Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 43:59 minutes | 361 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Prospero Classical

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15, is a work for piano and orchestra completed by Johannes Brahms in 1858. The composer gave the work’s public debut in Hanover, the following year.[1] It was his first-performed orchestral work, and (in its third performance) his first orchestral work performed to audience approval.

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Robert Casadesus, Géza Anda, Clara Haskil, Nathan Milstein, Herbert von Karajan, Schweizerisches Festspielorchester & Philharmonia Orchestra – Herbert von Karajan – The Early Lucerne Years (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Robert Casadesus, Géza Anda, Clara Haskil, Nathan Milstein, Herbert von Karajan, Schweizerisches Festspielorchester & Philharmonia Orchestra – Herbert von Karajan – The Early Lucerne Years (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 03:44:53 minutes | 1,87 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © audite Musikproduktion

For the first time, this edition makes available Herbert von Karajan’s previously unreleased early live recordings from the Lucerne Festival, made in a decade during which Karajan was rebuilding his career. Included are legendary soloists such as Clara Haskil and Géza Anda, Robert Casadesus and Nathan Milstein.

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Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg, Géza Anda – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 6, 17 & 21 (1962/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg, Géza Anda – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 6, 17 & 21 (1962/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:51 minutes | 1,45 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Although he played very little Mozart in his early career Géza Anda became the first pianist to record the full cycle of Mozart’s piano concerti; he recorded them between 1961 and 1969, conducting himself from the keyboard. His performance of the Andante from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C on the soundtrack of the 1967 film Elvira Madigan led to the epithet “Elvira Madigan” often being applied to the concerto. Indeed his performance of this work is generally considered the benchmark recording; he plays artistically, full of emotion and the orchestra supports him wholeheartedly. His performance of the 17th concerto is also superb and the 6th is equally pleasing.

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Géza Anda – Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B Flat, Op. 83 / Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 (1968/2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Géza Anda – Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B Flat, Op. 83 / Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 (1968/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:22 minutes | 1,52 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

This program of Western classical masterpieces from Brahms and Grieg highlight the virtuosic beauty of staple pieces in the piano solo repertoire. Programming these two composers together enables listeners to hear the similarities between these two seemingly very different classical icons.

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Géza Anda – The Telefunken Recordings (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Géza Anda – The Telefunken Recordings (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:27:19 minutes | 905 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Audite Musikproduktion

Géza Anda: The Telefunken Recordings – masterpieces of incisive poetry and brilliant technique.
These recordings are characterised by Géza Anda’s distinctive balance of spontaneity and intellectual control, incisive poetry and brilliant technique. Géza Anda bestows upon his audience not only a pianistic and musical moment of glory, but also invites them to witness the birth of a pianistic aestheticism where objectivity and fantasy are no contradiction but are dependent on each other.

Following its ‘Edition Géza Anda’, audite now issues – for the first time on CD – Géza Anda’s Telefunken recordings made in 1950 and 1951. This fifth audite release featuring the Swiss-Hungarian pianist closes a gap which has long been a source of regret to connoisseurs and admirers of Géza Anda’s pianism. Chronologically, the Telefunken recordings are positioned between Anda’s first recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and the later recordings for Columbia and DG. They document the pianist’s transition from brilliant virtuoso to sophisticated musician. The objectivity of his Bach, Haydn and Mozart interpretations and the painstakingly worked out, fantastic world of the Schumann cycles complement each other in characteristic and fascinating fashion.

Comprising Robert Schumann’s Carnaval Op. 9 and his Symphonic Etudes Op. 13, the Telefunken recordings represent two important pillars of Anda’s repertoire. However, they also contain three works which he played only rarely: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826, Joseph Haydn’s Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI/23, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last Piano Sonata in D major, K. 576. The recording of the Mozart sonata is a particular rarity and treasure as it is the only recording of Anda, the great Mozart interpreter, documenting a performance of a Mozart work for solo piano.

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Géza Anda, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Pierre Fournier, Janos Starker, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Ferenc Fricsay – Beethoven: Triple Concerto / Brahms: Double Concerto (1961/1962/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Géza Anda, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Pierre Fournier, Janos Starker, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Ferenc Fricsay - Beethoven: Triple Concerto / Brahms: Double Concerto (1961/1962/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Géza Anda, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Pierre Fournier, Janos Starker, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Ferenc Fricsay – Beethoven: Triple Concerto / Brahms: Double Concerto (1961/1962/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:24 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Fricsay conducts concertos by Beethoven and Brahms: Friendship is the connecting link between the two works here. Beethoven is thought to have written his Triple Concerto in 1803 – 04 for his favorite pupil, the Archduke Rudolph. Brahms composed his Double Concerto in 1887 as a peace offering, to heal a breach with his friend the violinist Joseph Joachim. It seems to have done the trick; and it was canny of Brahms, who conducted the first performance (Cologne, October 1887), to have the cellist of the Joachim Quartet, Robert Hausmann, sharing solo hon- ours – it would have been difficult for Brahms and Joachim to have a row with a third party present. I do not know how friendly the soloists on these two famous recordings were, but I recall what a strong “house style” manated from Deutsche Grammophon productions in the 1950s and early 1960s.
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Geza Anda, Ferenc Fricsay, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra – Bartok – The 3 Piano Concertos (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Geza Anda, Ferenc Fricsay, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra - Bartok - The 3 Piano Concertos (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

Geza Anda, Ferenc Fricsay, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra – Bartok – The 3 Piano Concertos (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:18:47 minutes | 806 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Pristine Classical

At very long last we have a worthy recording of the Bartok Second Concerto, a work whose previous interpreters (including the admirable Andor Foldes, whose performance received Bartok’s own blessing) have all suffered from recording qualities ranging from indifferent to abysmal. This will be valuable in helping to spread a knowledge of an important work in Bartok’s output which is rarely heard in the concert hall, probably because of the ferocious difficulty of the solo part – Bartok seems to have had in mind huge hands with permanent built-in octave and thirds mechanisms. The music does not deserve this neglect, and though it is “tougher” in idiom than the more mellow Third Concerto it has in fact had a consistently successful reception ever since its first performance (by the composer) in 1933. A bravura, lithe work, it abounds in motor energy and in contrapuntal vigour and resource (much of the material of the first movement – which is played entirely without the strings – reappears in inversion, or even in retrograde inversion, in the finale): the central part of the Adagio is a brilliantly fantastic delicate scherzo which looks forward to the Sonata for two pianos and percussion. Soloist and orchestra co-operate in exemplary fashion in a performance remarkable for its precision of ensemble, clarity and exactness of detail: Gcxa Anda in pardcular is to be congratulated for the way he romps through all the difficulties. The recording is excellent, the stereo even better than the mono.
— L. S. The Gramophone, May 1961 – excerpt, review of DGG UP issue of Concertos 2 & 3
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