MOURA LYMPANY PLAYS CONCERTI

There are those wonderful pianists whose interpretations startle, excite, amaze.  And there are those whose playing is simply so right you just listen and forget to think about the playing.   Moura Lympany plays concerti this way.  Warhorses, like the Liszt A Major, that I listen to because I am curious as to how a certain pianist might play certain passages but rarely seek out for the pure pleasure of the music, come to life in her hands and I remember how delighted I was when I first got to know the music as a teenager.

There is but one (Turina's Rapsodia Sinfonica) work on this page that has not been played beyond recognition by those whose performing licenses should perhaps be taken away.  More common is the question, "Did I ever really love this music?"  And there is not a work on this page that Lympany has not brought back to life for me.   Even the Littolf Scherzo, when played by Moura Lympany, makes me want to hear the rest of the concerto.

This is the point at which one is tempted to try to put into words what exactly it is that she is doing when Lympani plays concerti so perfectly.  I would but I'm too busy listening to her play, a beatific smile on my face and an extraordinary sense that most of the important discoveries of my life still loom before me.

Mendelssohn  Capriccio brillant in B minor, Op. 22
Nikolai Malko conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra

recorded in 1945