Moscow

February 2018

Moscow,
In the footsteps of Emil Gilels

During a trip to Moscow, Frédéric D'Oria-Nicolas met Kirill Gilels — the grandson of Emil Gilels. Kirill would put us on the trail of unreleased recordings of his grandfather made in Germany and the Netherlands. He would open his grandfather's archives to us, notably for previously unseen original photographs that we would use in our box set of Emil Gilels's five recitals at the Concertgebouw.

A pianistic monument

Tape No. 1

EMIL GILELS

THE UNRELEASED RECITALS AT THE CONCERTGEBOUW

"In June 2017, while I was scheduled to perform in Moscow, I met Kirill Gilels, grandson of the famous pianist Emil Gilels. He listened to what our Phoenix Mastering restoration process could accomplish and gave us a list of years and places of his grandfather's unpublished recordings In Berlin, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, we discover a heritage which amazes us with the quality and constancy of Emil Gilels' pianistic playing. one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century It was finally in Amsterdam, thanks to the determination of Piet Tullenaar, that we succeeded in extracting five recitals that the pianist gave between 1975 and 1980 at the Concertgebouw and of which everyone had forgotten. existence. As we audition the tapes one by one in the studio allocated to us, neither Piet Tullenaar, nor Michel Navarra, nor myself exchange a word. What a beauty! Frédéric D'ORIA-NICOLAS

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