Classical Music for Aficionados

On Madame butterfly, Puccini made extensive use of Japanese melodies. 
Quite different from "North Africa" melodies.
"One of the more striking aspects of exoticism in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is the extent
to which the composer incorporated Japanese musical material in his score. From the earliest
discussion of the work, musicologists have identified many Japanese melodies and musical
characteristics that Puccini used in this work."
Kunio Hara

Puccini based his Madame Butterfly on a short story by John Long, which was based upon a French novel by Pierre Loti.  Subsequently, David Belasco wrote a one act play "Madame Butterfly, A Tragedy of Japan" which Puccini saw in Londonin 1900.

Listening to Vladimir Sofronitsky
Liszt, Annees de Pelerinage. recorded 1949-53
takes my breath away, so beautiful, masterful

from pianostreet:
This performance given by Georges Cziffra took place September 20, 1962 in Montreux, France, under conductor Roberto Benzi with the Orch. National de la RTF. The live recording was never commercially released and is not available in any box set. Neither is it available in full on YouTube, or anywhere else, it appears. It was forwarded to me from a friend's hard-drive collection.
The program was: Grieg Concerto in A minor and Liszt's Totentanz, with an encore being the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6. As those familiar with this pianist will tell you, Cziffra's live performances differ a great deal from his studio recordings, which further diminished with the sudden death of his son, Cziffra Jr. The significance of this concert is that, so I believe, Cziffra gives the single greatest performance of his life and, almost by definition, one of the greatest ever. It truly has to be heard to be believed, particularly the Totentanz where he not only plays at mind-boggling speeds but openly improvises. The orchestra is also stunning.

 01-Track 1.mp3 (10011.8 kB - downloaded 631 times.)
 02-Track 2.mp3 (4625.81 kB - downloaded 540 times.)
 03-Track 3.mp3 (7785.17 kB - downloaded 425 times.)
 04-Track 4.mp3 (11994.53 kB - downloaded 559 times.)
I've attached that encore here. 
05-Track 5.mp3 (6129.65 kB - downloaded 1513 times.)
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=49437.0

After reading the The young Icelandic pianist Vikkingur Olaffson's favourite Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould was his perfomance at Salzburg in 1959 I have to concur. He still dosn't heed any of the repeats but it is a blistering performance all the same. It is much faster than the 1955 recording and a world away in terms of recording quallity. By the way I don't know if any of you have this CD or not but a man called Zenph invented a way of re recording classic recordings from quite far back and he makes a remarkable job of it. He takes the basic recording and electronically processes it . it gets played back through a modern concert grand of the Yamaha type where it goes onto a disc which is inserted into the piano and you get a modern repoduction of the piece minus the distortions of pre 1950s discs. I must say up to now if I wanted to hear Gould play the 55s it would then be the Zenph copy. I don't know what happened to Zenph but I thought he was onto a winner but probably the big record companies crushed him before he could get started . I'm sorry I digressed and I do appologise but see if you can find it and you shall be in for a treat ,( I just don't know how he can play so fast ) the 59 copy not the 55 Zenph.