Does anyone have this vinyl record? Gary Graffman plays Beethoven 3rd piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony orchestra and Walter Hendl (spelling?) conducting. How much do you think this vinyl record is worth? My friend has it and I am very interested in buying it from him, but he said he found that it went for very high prices on the internet. When I searched for prices to compare with on the internet, I ran across a variety of prices from various sources.

First, with the ungodly expensive:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1960-GARY-GRAFFM...=item5891211671

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GARY-GRAFFMAN-BE...=item3cbf1a5163

This is much less, but still seems very expensive for a vinyl record:

http://www.popsike.com/Graffman-Beethoven-Concerto-3-RCA-Living-Stereo/320763143543.html

These almost seem reasonable, but I still feel iffy, compared to the prices I've payed for other pretty awesome vinyl records...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Graffman-Chicago-Symphony-BEETHOVEN-CONCERTO-NO-3-mono-/220576923335

http://www.popsike.com/Beethoven-Conc-3-GARY-GRAFFMAN-LSC2396-LP1960-VG/260561180271.html

This looks like it could be reasonable:

http://www.gemm.com/item/GARY-GRAFFMAN-W...3/GML765989100/

And then I found these, which are in a MUCH more affordable price range...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Beethoven-Piano-...=item27be1750a1

http://www.seymourstuff.com/classrcavics.htm

What do you think? Who here is familiar with this recording, and how much do you think it is worth paying for it? Once again, to clarify, I am not looking to order from the links I listed... I was just finding prices to compare to so I could decide on a reasonable amount to pay my friend for this record, but since I found things ranging from $3 to $300 on the same record, I am totally confused!

Also, how much should I pay for Rudolf Firkunsky playing Brahms' 1st piano concerto with William Steinberg conducting Pittsburg Symphony? I listened to previews of it online and REALLY liked what I heard.

Never mind, mods please delete or lock. We came up with a great agreement. I will buy a huge bulk of good records he is getting rid of for a good price!

The fact that many worthy recordings by Graffman, Andre Watts, and Andre Tchaikovsky have never been transferred to CD reflects very badly on Sony.

Not to mention Malcolm Frager's Prokofiev 2 which has something of the status of a legend. And I've still never heard the damn thing...

My priorities and 'mad money' must be quite different from some collectors, as I could never conceive of blowing 300 bucks on an LP.

I mean really.

$0.25 at a yard sale is about my speed. I once bought a lot of 500 records for $10 and there were actually a bunch of good ones in there (also many really, really bad ones).

Is the Graffman one of them? I don't own it, but have heard it and I know it is a rarity. What it's worth is another question, but as with anything it is worth only that which another is willing to pay for it.

Yes it is, and yes, I got it!

the nosy ape, my music school's library gave away tons of vinyl records for free, and I walked away with so many of them!! Vinyl records are amazing.

Here it is!!

Absolutely. If I weren't particularly interested in the set, as I'm not I'd say something like:



But if I were desperately interested, I might trade my string of poloponies for it.

OSK: When it comes to things like this, IMO there's absolutely no way to give a reliable answer to your question. Even when there seem to be some reasonable "comps," they don't really apply, because each situation is different, plus even for the exact same item it can vary hugely from one moment to the next. This is how it is with any "thin market" where there isn't a large supply nor a constant flow of buying and selling. It's just whatever you can work out, which depends on your skill (which in this case seems to have been pretty darn good) as well as how desperate you are to get the thing.

Back in the day I needed 1 card to complete my set of "Zorro" cards. It wasn't a particularly valuable card, just the card that I was missing. I traded someone 50 cards to get it. It was worth it.
Sort of.

P.S. Graffman was the pianist for the only 'live' performance I ever heard of "your favorite [ahem] concerto." I don't think I have to tell you which one that is.
Main thing I remember is that the orchestra screwed up a little at the beginning of the 2nd mvt. Graffman smiled.
I have the LP set of his complete Tchaikovsky concerti. It's terrific.

P.S. I love seeing people still being into vinyl! IMO you can't beat it -- but I'm not sure how objective I'm being.

However objective or not, you are correct.

And I saw that he also has a vinyl record of that concerto, so I'll try to find it!

I hope you realize I meant Tchaik #1.

I have always thought that vinyl sounds better than CD. I have a small collection of vinyl, items I have picked up at second-hand dealers.

I think that the difference between an LP and a CD is similar to the difference between a play and a movie. When you watch a play, you know that you are expected to make up the difference between the sets and the reality, and your mind does it so well that you ignore everything that is obviously not real. Also, you concentrate on the words and the action, the real meat of the play. At a movie, you expect everything to be very realistic, and so you are more aware of things that are off.

Of course, not everyone watches plays and movies in the same way, and this is one reason some people prefer movies to plays. I am not one of those people, however. I am not real big on recordings of any sort, either. There is just too much live music.

Nobody is going to comment on the recording I shared?

Mark, sorry, I saw on the LP that he had indeed recorded the Brahms D Minor. I also saw somewhere that he recorded the Tchaikovsky 1st.

I am jealous, how come I am never around for these types of things? Anyway, if you absolutely must have the Graffman record then buy it and average the cost over your entire collection to make yourself feel better.

Must be the Victrola version, because there is a lot of wow. RCA made some pretty thin records for a while, and that sounds like one of them.

I know I have a recording of Graffman playing a concerto or two, possibly Rachmaninoff, on the Mercury label, but it is stored away somewhere with all my shellac and vinyl recordings which I no longer listen to.

You got me curious so I dug around and found that he also recorded Prokofiev's 1st and 3rd with Szell and the Cleveland orchestra. Too bad I don't have a record player right now. Graffman is one of my all-time favorites.

Here is an interesting rarity - Graffman in the premiere of Benjamin Lees' 2nd piano concerto with Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony. It's like Prokofiev crossed with Bartok. There are some weird problems with the source, which seems to be a tape of the broadcast - there are moments when another performance of something else sort of hovers in the background, adding an odd Charles Ives effect. But still, it's better than not to have it at all.

I love it that people are putting stuff like this, that is basically impossible to obtain otherwise, on YouTube. The uploader who gave us this also has a lot of other very rare material on his channel. Or, I should say, formerly very rare.

Back to Graffman...I can't help but think that his very aggressive approach to playing, which is really front and center in this piece, must have been a factor in why he got sidelined. In so many of his recordings, it often sounds like, instead of working with the instrument, he is trying to pound it into submission. That can be exciting, but there's a price to pay.

Whoa... Thanks for sharing that concerto, wr. I listened all the way through it twice in a row and liked it!

When you say "got sidelined", are you referring specifically to his injury?

-J

Hey Jason! You usually understand everything! I can't believe you didn't get that!

(Absolutely that's what he meant. I'm a little curious why it wasn't clear. Could you just not imagine that 'aggressive' playing might lead to that??)

I remember reading, very early on, that it was thought maybe to have been related to his fondness for sometimes taking octaves with 1-3. But maybe that idea was dropped later on....

Vinyl has an amazing quality to it, for every type of music. Jazz and Classical especially sound better on vinyl than CD. I wish I had the time and money to accumulate a formidable record collection, but I can't.... yet

Thanks, but I'll take that as the overstatement of the almost-completed year.


I thought that possibly wr just meant that Graffman's career got sidelined in general, perhaps the way (arguably) that Yundi Li's has.

But I can see that that's not a probable interpretation, and he certainly meant by the injury. Maybe I was in a strange frame of mind. I had just been reading Perahia's account of his hand injuries, and how they just seemed to come from nowhere. Fleisher's story has always filled me with fear and dread. I'm an injured pianist myself, and these things really resonate with me. I just hadn't thought that something like focal dystonia could have a "cause" like aggressive playing. It's kind of a fascinating hypothesis to me, actually, and I guess I just wanted confirmation.

-Jason

How did Yundi Li's career get sidelined?

Oh, I had thought (vaguely, and without much evidence) that some of his more recent performances were supposedly disappointing, and great as he is (of course), he wasn't quite living up to the expectations one might have had after he won the Chopin Competition. But if someone else has a more informed view of his career trajectory, please correct me.

-J

You've already realized this, but yes, that's what I meant.

I wouldn't take something like that at face value. I'm not saying he's lying, just possibly not realizing.

Even given who he is.


I think you're imagining that "focal dystonia" is a more specific thing than it is.

As near as I can tell, it's not a specific condition, but more of a description. Lots of things are like that. Kind of like "fever" -- it doesn't say much of anything about what the cause might be, and it could be many different things. I think the reason "focal dystonia" can be more deceiving in this regard is that it sounds so technical and specific. But really it's just a couple of medical words describing the manifestations.

You might want to check out Ian Hobson's CD of it.