Sunday, June 13, 2010

Géza Anda died on 1976 June 13




One of my favorite pianists, Géza Anda, died 34 years ago. I got to know his name from the complete 12 LP set of Mozart's Piano Concerti I bought at Fidelio Records in Calgary when I was in high school. That set is still somewhere in the basement in Oakville. It's available on CD now, but I've not bought it because I already have Barenboim's set with the BPO and Ashkenazy's set with the Philharmonia. It's interesting to note that Anda composed some tasteful candenza's for the Mozart piano concerti for which Mozart did not leave a written cadenza. The first recording I ever heard of KV 467 was Anda's later Eurodisc recording with the Wiener Symphoniker which was made shortly before his death. That recording was in my Great Men of Music Mozart box (Time-Life Records). I bought the 5 CD DG set Géza Anda, Troubadour of the Piano from DG Webshop as an MP3 download because I couldn't get it from Amazon.ca. It was from that set that I finally heard the glories of his Brahms B-flat concerto (earlier recording with his countryman, Ferenc Friscay) and the Schumann that I love. There's also his intriguing recording of Schubert's D960 and some beautiful Chopin.

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