Renato Vinicius wrote:

>What about the set? Did you (or who ever had bought it) listen to it? I'm
>thinking on buying cause I don't have a complete set of the sonatas, yet.

I don't know about the earlier set, but I quite recently bought the Dante
Schnabel set, and despite his great reputation, I found myself often
disappointed.  Schnabel sometimes rushes so quickly thru the music that
it seems sloppy and blurred.  When he digs in, he's wonderful, but I
personally found too many of the performances not worth the effort of
listening past the primitive sonics.  So much so that I decided to get a
more modern set.  After looking around for recommendations, I found that
the most respected performances of complete sets were by Arrau and Kempff.
I looked around the web for bargains, but the best I could do was on the
Tower web site.  There, I was able to get the Arrau set of 14 CDs for
$97.86, and a USED version (now offered by Tower now and then) of the
Kempff (8 CDs) for $47.92.  They just arrived today, so obviously I didn't
have time for a critical comparison in depth.  I can tell you this, tho,
after listening to both versions of the Waldstein:  Arrau takes a more
calculatedly poetic/dramatic approach in this piece, and Kempff takes a
cleaner, "straighter" approach.  At first I thought I preferred the Arrau
(I listened to the first couple of minutes of the Kempff first, then the
Arrau straight thru.) But when I went back and listened to the entire
Kempff, I found myself liking his approach better.  Again, tho, this was
just on the Waldstein; I should also point out that Arrau's set also
includes the 5 piano concertos, plus a simply grand performance of the
Triple concerto with Szering and Starker on vn & cello, played with the New
Philharmonia and Inbal conducting.  (I also listened to his 5th, also quite
grand, and again, underlining the dramatic moments.) Arrau has the more
current sonics, as well.  So far, I'm pretty happy about both of these
sets.  And by the way, despite the occasional knocks I've read here about
Tower (I also saw the Davis, CA Tower was discontinuing its classical
section, to my dismay) the Tower Web service has been absolutely
great--excellent selection, decent enough prices, and a very enlightened
pricing policy for shipping.  Also very prompt shipping.  Check it out!

Dave Wolf  [log in to unmask]