Album

Ivan Moravec may well have the most beautiful tone of any living pianist. Not that he lacks technique: a wrong note is never heard in a Moravec performance. Nor does he lack temperament: Moravec can apparently play anything in the repertoire and play it as if he composed it, creating the piece rather than re-creating it. But it is his tone that truly distinguishes Moravec: superbly, supremely, sublimely beautiful, Moravec's tone is the musical equivalent of Cézanne's brush strokes. Every note is a luminous star glowing in the firmament. It is his tone more than anything else that holds together this recital from the 2000 Prague Spring Festival. After all, how much does the piano music of Haydn, Janácek, Chopin, and Debussy have in common? But Moravec's tone unites them. His Haydn Sonata in D major has wit, but also beauty. His Chopin preludes have character, but also beauty. His reading of Debussy's Ondine has virtuosity, but also beauty. And his final two Chopin mazurkas have a darkly glowing Slavic soul and also beauty. But as good as Moravec's Haydn, Chopin, and Debussy are, his Janácek is better. Most pianists play Janácek's sonata as a battle at the barricades, but without diminishing the strife of the music Moravec makes it sound beautiful. Most pianists play Janácek's In the Mists as an eccentric and enigmatic sequence of gestures and grimaces, but without diminishing the essential strangeness of the music, Moravec makes it sound beautiful. And by making Janácek sound beautiful, Moravec does not force beauty on the music so much as reveal the inherent beauty of the music. This is as beautiful a recital as has ever been recorded and arguably the most beautiful Janácek piano music ever recorded.

© James Leonard, All Music Guide

CD 1
Antonio Vivaldi Composer Recorder Concerto in C, RV443 Work 10:07 Peter Thalheimer Flute (Baroque), Collegium Musica Rara Stuttgart Ensemble
1	1.Allegro	4:16			$0.99
2	2.Largo	2:48			$0.99
3	3.Allegro molto	3:03			$0.99
Georg Philipp Telemann Composer Concerto in C, for recorder, strings and continuo, TWV51:C1 Work 15:47 Peter Thalheimer Flute (Baroque), Collegium Musica Rara Stuttgart Ensemble
4	1.Allegretto	3:29			$0.99
5	2.Allegro	4:29			$0.99
6	3.Andante	4:25			$0.99
7	4.Tempo di Minuet	3:24			$0.99
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Composer Flute Concerto in G, H.445, Wq.169 Work 26:39 Peter Thalheimer Flute (Baroque), Collegium Musica Rara Stuttgart Ensemble
8	1.Allegro di molto	13:09			$2.49
9	2.Largo	6:29			$0.99
10	3.Presto	7:01			$1.49