Donald Satz wrote:

>David Harbin writes:
>
>>It was a relief to hear the 1930 Coates/Horowitz on Naxos (listen on
>>www.naxos.com).  Coates' fiery conducting and Horowitz's sheer virtuosity
>>in the final pages are breathtaking.
>
>Yes, that 1930's version has 'combustible' written all over it.  In
>addition, the Naxos disc has a number of solo Horowitz performances,
>three of which have never been previously released.  Unfortunately, the
>Naxos website indicates in the boldest of lettering that the disc is not
>available in the United States.  Evidently, the Naxos empire would
>self-destruct if the disc made its way here.

Probably this has been mentioned before, but all one has to do is go to
one of the overseas websites and order it, and/or many similarly marked
issues, there.

While the sound is lousy (a better copy does exist, but has yet to be
issued) I find the Horowitz Barbirolli the one to hear...

Scott Colebank's 1997 discography of the concerto lists 115 recordings!
Scott points out that Horowitz took different cuts on all but his Ormandy
recording.

Timings
Coates [33:31]
Barbirolli [34:19]
Koussevitzky [37:50]
Reiner [37:19]
Ormandy [43:18]
Mehta [41:19]

Scott also rates them all. He preferred the Coates to the Barbirolli but
also gave the Mehta the same performance rating as the Coates. He also
gave the following higher ratings than any of the Horowitz
in no particular order:

Janis/Munch; Janis/Dorati; Rachmaninoff/Ormandy; Argerich/Chailly;
Shelley/Thomson; Rodriguez/Tabakov; Cliburn/Kondrashin;
Ashkenazy/Fistoulari; Orozco/de Waart; Weissenberg/Pretre

and ones to avoid:

Barto/Eschenbach; Gavrilov/Muti; Gieseking/Mengelberg; Kissen/Ozawa
and...you guess it...Helfgott/Horvat.

Karl