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<!-- #thumb --> <p>Aside from the Persian fairy tale <b><i>THE THREE PRINCES OF SERENDIP</i></b>, but rather from another that is not a tall one…</p>
<p><b>The rest of the story:</b></p>
<p>Was it serendipity or mere coincidence that I scooped Reference Records’ famed LP of Minuro Nojima’s* Liszt piano works for The Abso!ute Sound?<a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftn1">[1]</a> Perhaps the first, for Editor Robert Harley, as well as others, had called it the best piano recording of all time, ever.</p>
<p>Recorded at CA Civic Auditorium, Oxnard in December 1986 by Professor Keith O. Johnson, MusicWeb International’s classical music editor Christopher Howell chose it as the Recording of the Month in 2007. In other words, according to many an opinion, Nojima’s is the epic recording of these pieces.</p>
<p><i>“I …start off by saying that Nojima really does seem to be the greatest pianist practically no one has ever heard of, but I see Wikipedia has got there first. My exploration of the “Hatto originals” has led me to the discovery of an unexpected number of excellent pianists. Of all those I’ve heard so far, the one who has had me reaching for the adjective “great” is Minoru Nojima…</i><i>I am going to declare that this is one of the great Liszt discs in the catalogue.<b>*</b></i></p>
<p><i>In </i>Feux follets<i> he has that miraculous evenness of touch which gives the passage-work a life and poetry of its own, something we normally have to seek in records by the likes of Ignaz Friedman. Again </i>in La Campanella<i> total clarity allied to unfailing tonal beauty make for an alluring display of delicate pointillist colours. Every note seems to have its own individual voice. </i><i>At the other end of the spectrum Nojima unleashes a demoniac force in the </i>Mephisto Waltz<i>, without loss of clarity and without any hardening of the tone, while in the central section he is able to withdraw into a world of private meditation.”</i></p>
<p>I could not have said it better, even though in my own prescience I unsurely tried to in the1986 The Abso!ute Sound review. At the time I thought to myself, what merit could this recording have, other than its sonic vitality, to be deemed as the virtuoso performance *and piano recording of all time by other scribes who had never read my review?</p>
<p>Just for the technophiles amongst you:</p>
<p><b>Transcendental Etude No. 5 “Feux-follets”</b><b></b></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/31.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11853" alt="31 300x92 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/31-300x92.png" width="300" height="92" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Simon 3 min. 39 sec.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/41.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11854" alt="41 300x88 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/41-300x88.png" width="300" height="88" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Hatto original 3 min. 39 sec.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/51.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11855" alt="51 300x96 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/51-300x96.png" width="300" height="96" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Nojima 3 min. 30 sec.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/61.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11856" alt="61 300x93 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/61-300x93.png" width="300" height="93" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Hatto revised 3 min. 28 sec.</p>
<p>Indeed, as Farhan Malik measured the TIME, timing and pace – and the realization of Howell’s (2007) and my words from 1986- we see that there are not so minor differences between the world’s best pianists who had recorded these works.<a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftn2">[2]</a> Nojima’s performance seems sped up in the other tunes, not here. One might also consider that Nojima’s falls in-between the range of the Hatto original and revised, as well as we see the obvious clarity of the Nojima. Hatto was, to say the least, less reserved in her later recording.</p>
<p>Listening to Nojima once again (I have both the LP original and the CD), I am reminded of my dad, a master watchmaker who studied at the IWC academy in Shaffhausen, an obsessive opera lover who bought seasonal tickets for my pianist sister and the rest of us, coming out of his jewelry store in Pest (the city across the Danube from Buda) and looking wistfully at Franz Liszt’s apartment on the other side of the street. What possibly could he have been thinking?</p>
<p>Maybe about this?</p>
<p>Franz Liszt’s piano – Budapest Museum</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/11.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11848" alt="11 300x203 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/11-300x203.png" width="300" height="203" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>And that, friends, is the rest of the story.</p>
<p>It is not just coincidence.</p>
<p>It is SERENDIPITY.</p>
<p>Andrew G. Benjamin</p>
<p>© All Rights Reserved</p>
<div readability="6.625"><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div readability="6.63157894737">
<p><a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftnref">[1]</a> http://www.referencerecordings.com/ClassicalIntro.asp</p>
</div>
<div readability="6.61111111111">
<p><a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftnref">[2]</a> http://www.farhanmalik.com/hatto/lisztetudes1.html</p>
</div>
</div>
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[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/]
<p><b>The rest of the story:</b></p>
<p>Was it serendipity or mere coincidence that I scooped Reference Records’ famed LP of Minuro Nojima’s* Liszt piano works for The Abso!ute Sound?<a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftn1">[1]</a> Perhaps the first, for Editor Robert Harley, as well as others, had called it the best piano recording of all time, ever.</p>
<p>Recorded at CA Civic Auditorium, Oxnard in December 1986 by Professor Keith O. Johnson, MusicWeb International’s classical music editor Christopher Howell chose it as the Recording of the Month in 2007. In other words, according to many an opinion, Nojima’s is the epic recording of these pieces.</p>
<p><i>“I …start off by saying that Nojima really does seem to be the greatest pianist practically no one has ever heard of, but I see Wikipedia has got there first. My exploration of the “Hatto originals” has led me to the discovery of an unexpected number of excellent pianists. Of all those I’ve heard so far, the one who has had me reaching for the adjective “great” is Minoru Nojima…</i><i>I am going to declare that this is one of the great Liszt discs in the catalogue.<b>*</b></i></p>
<p><i>In </i>Feux follets<i> he has that miraculous evenness of touch which gives the passage-work a life and poetry of its own, something we normally have to seek in records by the likes of Ignaz Friedman. Again </i>in La Campanella<i> total clarity allied to unfailing tonal beauty make for an alluring display of delicate pointillist colours. Every note seems to have its own individual voice. </i><i>At the other end of the spectrum Nojima unleashes a demoniac force in the </i>Mephisto Waltz<i>, without loss of clarity and without any hardening of the tone, while in the central section he is able to withdraw into a world of private meditation.”</i></p>
<p>I could not have said it better, even though in my own prescience I unsurely tried to in the1986 The Abso!ute Sound review. At the time I thought to myself, what merit could this recording have, other than its sonic vitality, to be deemed as the virtuoso performance *and piano recording of all time by other scribes who had never read my review?</p>
<p>Just for the technophiles amongst you:</p>
<p><b>Transcendental Etude No. 5 “Feux-follets”</b><b></b></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/31.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11853" alt="31 300x92 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/31-300x92.png" width="300" height="92" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Simon 3 min. 39 sec.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/41.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11854" alt="41 300x88 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/41-300x88.png" width="300" height="88" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Hatto original 3 min. 39 sec.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/51.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11855" alt="51 300x96 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/51-300x96.png" width="300" height="96" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Nojima 3 min. 30 sec.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/61.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11856" alt="61 300x93 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/61-300x93.png" width="300" height="93" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>Hatto revised 3 min. 28 sec.</p>
<p>Indeed, as Farhan Malik measured the TIME, timing and pace – and the realization of Howell’s (2007) and my words from 1986- we see that there are not so minor differences between the world’s best pianists who had recorded these works.<a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftn2">[2]</a> Nojima’s performance seems sped up in the other tunes, not here. One might also consider that Nojima’s falls in-between the range of the Hatto original and revised, as well as we see the obvious clarity of the Nojima. Hatto was, to say the least, less reserved in her later recording.</p>
<p>Listening to Nojima once again (I have both the LP original and the CD), I am reminded of my dad, a master watchmaker who studied at the IWC academy in Shaffhausen, an obsessive opera lover who bought seasonal tickets for my pianist sister and the rest of us, coming out of his jewelry store in Pest (the city across the Danube from Buda) and looking wistfully at Franz Liszt’s apartment on the other side of the street. What possibly could he have been thinking?</p>
<p>Maybe about this?</p>
<p>Franz Liszt’s piano – Budapest Museum</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/11.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11848" alt="11 300x203 Serendipity" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/11-300x203.png" width="300" height="203" title="Serendipity" /></a></p>
<p>And that, friends, is the rest of the story.</p>
<p>It is not just coincidence.</p>
<p>It is SERENDIPITY.</p>
<p>Andrew G. Benjamin</p>
<p>© All Rights Reserved</p>
<div readability="6.625"><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div readability="6.63157894737">
<p><a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftnref">[1]</a> http://www.referencerecordings.com/ClassicalIntro.asp</p>
</div>
<div readability="6.61111111111">
<p><a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/#_ftnref">[2]</a> http://www.farhanmalik.com/hatto/lisztetudes1.html</p>
</div>
</div>
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[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/serendipity/11844/]