CLASSICAL

摘要

Unusually, LSO Live is marketing this 33m 53s album as a download only (high-res £4.99 at its own site - more expensive elsewhere!). It was recorded at the Barbican in Feb '13 with a Bruckner Symphony No 9 already on SACD. What makes it exceptional is Pires's revelatory playing of solo passages towards the end of the Adagio (elsewhere she's bright and clear) and the way Haitink tailors the LSO dynamics to set the piano in the best light. With movement timings close to those on the 1986 Perahia/Haitink CBS LP it's perhaps too sober an account for all tastes; the stereo Serkin/Ormandy (1965) remains my benchmark reading.