Extra Tracks

Below are tracks from our library that never made it onto one of our compact discs. They can be downloaded here as high quality 320kbs AAC encoded (MP3) files. Those originating on 78rpm discs are raw and no attempt to clean up the surface noise had been made although we have removed some loud cracks and bangs. Please note the previews are compressed files so the sound is not as good as that on the whole track.

Tracks can be downloaded from this page,
price GBP 0.50 each

Purchasers of tracks have unlimited personal use but must not pass or sell on to third parties nor broadcast without prior permission from PPL

Denis Matthews (1919- 1988)

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" Yet another Mozart piano concerto from Denis Matthews, this time the famous A major so notoriously difficult to bring off in a recording, or for that matter in performance. Readers who turn up my reviews of three earlier LP performances (Gieseking in December, Clifford Curzon in April, Liii Kraus in May) will find small content with any of them. This new Matthews disc strikes me as the best version available; but I would welcome it with all the reservations made before in the cases of his K.595, 414 and 49, reviewed this month and last. That is to say the performance is a gentle, grisaille one, without much vitality of rhythm or keenness of attack, a tasteful, delicate performance, neatly executed. Matthews uses Mozarts sketch of a cadenza in the first movement, plays the second as written (i.e. without filling in the gaps, as Liii Kraus did), and is so reticent in the finale that some of the notes in arpeggios which should surely sound brilliant disappear altogether. The orchestral support is tidy, pleasant in tone, rather undervitalised. The recording is agreeable, and in accord with the generally subdued effect." A.P> writing in the Gramophone November 1954

Download the whole concerto for GBP 1.50

1st movement

2nd movement

3rd movement

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