KHACHATURIAN Piano Concerto – Rother / Pinter 1951

Orchestra Symphonique de Radio-Berlin
sous le direction de
Arthur ROTHER
Soliste: Margot PINTER

My transfer from vinyl at FLAC Level 8. Tags in English. Cover scans and sleeve notes in French.

Password-protected link – the password is my username, exactly as written in lower case: https://itsssl.com/vse5I

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bother with a recording of this quality, but this one is fascinating and also incredibly rare… so I just couldn’t resist.

I can find virtually no information about it. It’s a 10-inch vinyl record which I found in a box in a second hand record shop this weekend. The sleeve was falling apart as you can see from the scans, but the record itself was in awfully good condition bearing in mind it is nearly 65 years old and obviously has a fascinating history – how it got from Paris to London we will never know. Russian music, a German recording, released on a French record label, and a genuine French-manufactured pressing.

The orchestra and soloist are historically unremarkable. Artur Rother conducted the famous wartime stereo recordings with Walter Gieseking and which were released on the label that shall not be named, and in the mid 1950s he accompanied Jerry Goldsmith’s mentor Jakob Gimpel in recordings of concertos by Beethoven, Grieg, and Schumann.

This recording appears to be a studio recording made for East German radio in around 1952, but the sound quality is somewhat raw for that era. Despite that, there is a presence and a feeling in this recording that is completely addictive.

It’s an excellent performance of the concerto, although obviously recordings which are infinitely superior from a technical standpoint are available. It’s a testament to 1950s music-making in Europe, and to the excellence of German broadcast orchestras of that era.

Overall, I find it well worth a listen – and I do hope you will, too.

Enjoy! 🙂
TT