PASC105: Piano Concertos 21 & 12

Notes on the restoration: This rather wonderful recording is an excellent example of collaborative work between two restoration engineers. The original transfer and clean up was carried out by vinyl wizard Peter Harrison and, before the advent of XR remastering, is more or less what would have been presented here for your delectation.

Actually, it may not have been, as Peter was concerned about distortion in several of the movements and was particularly unsure about its technical suitability, despite being fond of the performance. He sent me the entire 'completed' restoration across the Internet to see what, if anything, XR might bring to it.

My initial thoughts on hearing the recording were that the top end was particularly harsh and unbalanced, and that fixing this might also have a beneficial effect on the aforementioned tendency to sound distorted, where upper harmonics in the piano were being given undue prominence.

My hunch paid off, and the resulting final recording presented here is one that has appeared unusually regularly on the Pristine Audio hi-fi over the last few weeks. It's unusual these days to hear Mozart played with an orchestra of the size deployed here - and what a delight its richness and fullness is to hear! Both concertos are taken with a degree of restraint that Peter refers to as 'gentlemanly', and this brings a charm and warmth to both works which I really do love.

Moura Lympany

notes from Wikipedia

Dame Moura Lympany DBE (b. August 18, 1916, Saltash, Cornwall, UK - d. March 28, 2005, London) was an English concert pianist.

She was born as Mary Johnstone at Saltash, Cornwall. Her father was an army officer who had served in World War I and her mother originally taught her the piano. Mary was sent to a convent school in Belgium, where her musical talent was encouraged, and she went on to study at Liège, later winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London.

After auditioning for the conductor, Basil Cameron, she made her concert debut at the age of twelve. It was at this stage that she changed her name, using a variation of her mother's maiden name of Limpenny.

She went on to study in Vienna with Paul Weingarten and in London with Mathilde Verne, who had been a pupil of Clara Schumann. In 1935, she made her London debut at the Wigmore Hall, and in 1938 she came second in the Ysaÿe Piano Competition in Brussels. By the Second World War, she was one of the UK's most popular pianists.

In 1940 she gave the British premiere of Aram Khachaturian's Piano Concerto in D flat, one of the pieces most closely associated with her. In 1944 she married Colin Defries, but they divorced in 1950. In 1951 she married Bennet H. Korn, an American television executive, and moved to the USA where she had two miscarriages, and a son who died shortly after birth. They divorced in 1961. She became a close friend of the politician and amateur musician, Edward Heath, and mutual friends expressed hopes that they might marry, but Heath was a "confirmed bachelor".

After the war she became more widely known, performing throughout Europe and in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. She had her second mastectomy in 1970, but continued working and gained renewed popularity. In 1979, fifty years after making her debut, she performed at the Royal Festival Hall for Charles, Prince of Wales. In the 1970s she was awarded the CBE, and in 1992, made a Dame of the British Empire. She also received honours from the Belgian, French, and Portuguese governments. Moura - Her Autobiography, written with her cousin, author Margot Strickland, was published by Peter Owen in 1991.

In 1981 she established the annual Rasiguères Festival of Music and Wine, near Perpignan, which ran for 10 years and also assisted Prince Louis de Polignac to establish in 1986 the Festival des Sept Chapelles in Guidel, Brittany,

She spent much of her time in Monaco and in France, but died in London, aged 88.

notes from Wikipedia