Reviews | RH-012 | RUGGIERO RICCI | Showpieces
| 29 July 2019 | Stephen Greenbank | MusicWeb International | Ruggiero Ricci Centenary Edition -2- showpieces «Ricci, intrepid and daring, in the sort of music he excelled in. If you're a Ruggiero Ricci fan, then the news is good. The Taiwan-based Rhine Classics has released three box-sets of live recitals and broadcasts featuring the violinist, who died in 2012 aged ninety-four. There's a 6-CD box of concerto performances, and two 4-CD sets of sonatas and showpieces. It's the latter I will turn my attention to in this review. [...] It was in the showpiece genre that I first became acquainted with the artist’s playing. The recitals in this new release span forty years, and derive from live concerts and studio recordings set down between 1946 and 1986. Much of the material is appearing on CD for the first time. [...] The recordings have been excellently restored and remastered by Emilio Pessina. All told this is a priceless collection and a valuable addition to the artist's discography.» |
| March 2019 | Rob Cowan | GRAMOPHONE (pg. 98-99) | Rhine gold: an archive treasure trove «Rob Cowan welcomes a historic label that has unearted some remarkable treasures. -- [...] The shimmering playing style of Ruggiero Ricci is very generously represented with three Centenary sets (he was born in 1918), the first (6 CDs: RH-008) devoted to concertos and including the w.p. of Ginastera's Concerto of 1963, dedicated jointly to Ricci and Bernstein, a gritty, outspoken piece fairlessy performed. Two accounts of Paganini's First Concerto (1958 under Thomas Schippers and 1975 under Heribert Esser) feature the crippingly difficult second version of Sauret's first-movement cadenza (1912), which Ricci throws off with athletic aplomb. Other works number [...] two excellent versions of the Brahm's Concerto (Henry Pensis and Eugen Jochum) plus an extremely flexible Sibelius Concerto under Hans Swarowsky. The other two Ricci sets are devoted respectively to sonatas (4 CDs: RH-013, with the most gripping accounts of Bloch's First Sonata ever recorded) and 'showpieces' (also 4 CDs: RH-012) with a short sequence of Paganini Caprices recorded in New York in 1946 that for brilliance quite defies belief. [...] » |
| 6 February 2019 | Jonathan Woolf | MusicWeb International | Ruggiero Ricci Centenary Edition -Vol.2- showpieces «Rhine Classics is back in business with a tranche of new releases of which the majority concentrate on the explosive art of Ruggiero Ricci. There are two 4-CD sets devoted to showpieces and to sonatas and a 6-CD set to concertos. [...] The final recital comes from November 1986, in the Teatro Comunale, Monfalcone. It was recorded by Emilio Pessina in situ on tape with Ricci’s permission. This consists of one of Ricci’s great set-pieces, a complete recital of Paganini’s Caprices in an ordering of his devising. [...] This lovingly compiled release has been very well engineered, from disparate source material, and features an attractive, photograph-laden booklet. The 24bit 96 kHz remastering sounds excellent. This is a boon for Ricci collectors.» |