Rachmaninov: The Piano Concertos; Paganini Rhapsody
Stephen Hough, piano
Dallas Symphony, Andrew Litton conducting
Hyperion (2004), 16/44 files
Reviewer David Hurwitz declared this set “the best set of Rachmaninov Piano Concertos ever recorded.” I haven’t heard them all myself, but certainly Hough and Litton are brilliant. The sound is quite good as well, although Hurwitz warns against the multi-channel release, which he says, “…places the listener in a somewhat distant balcony seat… There’s plenty of room acoustic, but this has the result of creating an excess of reverberation that lessens the impact of the orchestra, and more significantly, makes Hough’s contributions sound small-scale and lacking in the coloristic variety that comes across so vividly in regular stereo.”
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