Gyorgy Sandor - Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 11 (Remastered) (2020) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

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Gyorgy Sandor - Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 11 (Remastered) (2020) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

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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 Bartóks music that Sándor made for American Columbia between 1945 and 1955 and decades later for Sony Classical during his golden years. It also contains his justly famed interpretations of composers ranging from Bach to Rachmaninoff.

György Sándor specialized in the works of Eastern European composers, notably his countrymen Zoltan Kodaly (with whom he studied composition) and Bela Bartok (with whom he studied piano). Sandor’s nuanced interpretations of Bartok’s piano works were especially praised, and he premiered a number of the composer’s works, including the piano reduction of Concerto for Orchestra, which had been created in the 1940s but not performed until 1985. Sandor’s many recordings included the complete music for solo piano of Kodaly and Sergey Prokofiev.

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 Yorks Juilliard School, where his students included Hélène Grimaud and Malcolm Bilson. He continued to perform right up to 2005, the year of his death. He performed and recorded Bartoks music throughout his career, and his recordings document his special insight into the masters works. Having prepared Bartóks first two piano concertos under the composers guidance, the year after Bartóks death Sándor gave the world premiere of the Third Piano Concerto with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded it for Columbia. 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 Bartóks solo piano music, including the complete Mikrokosmos on three LPs. In the 1990s, the pianist, by then in his 80s, returned to Bartóks solo works, this time recording virtually all of them except the Mikrokosmos.