Pavarotti, 42, is the only classical singer who has ever performed a complete live recital before a national television audience, and the only one who has ever given a solo recital at the new Met.
It might seem out of character, but Rudolf Serkin, the masterly interpreter of central Germanic repertory and never a flashy technician, sometimes played the second book of Chopin Études (Op. 25) complete in recital.
These CDs from farewell concerts in Vienna and Hanover include one concerto and a complete solo recital and show Brendel as one of the supreme pianists of our time.
As for the effort involved in raising $7.8 million to buy and renovate the mustard-colored brick building ($2.5 million remains to be raised to complete the Recital Hall and other features), Ms. Feldman nodded toward the indefatigable director.
As a pianist Liszt was the first to give complete solo recitals, and he did a great deal to encourage the performance of music by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Wagner, and Robert Schumann by transcribing their works for piano and playing them in his concerts at a time when they were insufficiently appreciated.
Hywel Davies's Purl Ground, with its deep marimba resonance, completes an absorbing recital.
Yet Sonoma State, a university that does not even maintain a student symphony orchestra, now boasts a $145 million complex, the Donald & Maureen Green Music Center, dominated by the impressive new Weill Hall and including music classrooms, rehearsal rooms, studios and a nearly completed 250-seat recital hall.
Daniel Barenboim, who has performed and recorded all the sonatas repeatedly, will present a complete cycle in eight recitals over 17 days at Carnegie Hall, starting on Tuesday.
Not long after I got to London, I saw a recital of it, complete with orchestra, at the Royal Festival Hall.
"And in my spare time," he said, "coming out of this idea of working in short forms, with virtuosity and quick mood changes, I'm working on a recital of the complete Chopin Etudes.
