György Sándor - The Complete Columbia Albums Collection - Box Set 17CDs

Label : Sony

Format : Flac track

Cover : No

Few musicians were more significantly linked with a single composer than the late Hungarian-American pianist György Sándor with his teacher Béla Bartók. The authoritative recordings of Bartók’s music that Sándor made for American Columbia between 1945 and 1955 and decades later for Sony Classical during his “golden years” are now being reissued in a single box set of 17 CDs. It also contains his justly famed interpretations of composers ranging from Bach to Rachmaninoff. The earlier, monaural discs have never been issued before on CD.

György Sándor was born in 1912 in Budapest, where he studied the piano with Bartók for four years at the Liszt Academy as well as composition with Zoltán Kodály. He made his public debut in 1930 and, after performing widely throughout Europe, made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1939. The following year he decided to settle in the US, where he took citizenship, taught at two universities before moving in the 1980s to New York’s Juilliard School, where his students included Hélène Grimaud and Malcolm Bilson. He continued to perform right up to 2005, the year of his death.

Sándor remained a close lifelong friend of Bartók and was one of only ten people who attended the composer’s funeral in 1945. He performed and recorded his music throughout his career, and his recordings document his special insight into the master’s works. Having prepared Bartók’s first two piano concertos under the composer’s guidance, the year after Bartók’s death Sándor gave the world premiere of the Third Piano Concerto with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded it for Columbia. That premiere now makes its first appearance on CD on Sony Classical. Decades later, in 1989, Sándor made an acclaimed recording of all three concertos for Sony Classical, with Adam Fischer conducting the Hungarian State Orchestra, also included in the new set.

During his first decade with Columbia, Sándor recorded large swaths of Bartók’s solo piano music, including the complete Mikrokosmos on three LPs. Reviewing the latter, High Fidelity wrote: “To hear the entire vast, many-sided, gradually unfolding conception in the authoritative hands of Sándor is an enthralling experience.” In the 1990s, the pianist, by then in his 80s, returned to Bartók’s solo works, this time recording virtually all of them except the Mikrokosmos. About the original 4-CD set, Gramophone’s reviewer wrote: “I was astonished at the heft, energy and puckish humour of Sándor’s 1994 recording of the Piano Sonata, a more characterful rendition than its predecessor, with a particularly brilliant account of the folkish Allegro molto finale. Allegro barbaro is similarly ‘on the beam’, while Sándor brings a cordial warmth to the various collections of ethnic pieces, the Romanian Christmas Carols especially. His phrasing, rubato, expressive nuancing, attention to counterpoint and command of tone (sample the 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs) suggest the touch of a master, while his imagination relishes the exploratory nature of the Improvisations, Bagatelles and Miraculous Mandarin-style Studies.”

Tracklist : György Sándor - The Complete Columbia Albums Collection