I got a chance to listen to the three tapes by cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan and his accompanist Noreen Polera (not Vadym Kholodenko who is partnering with violinist Alena Baeva).
First a note on the quality of the musicians in these albums (both Narek and Alena and also Vadym). As most of you who follow the growth in the companies producing high quality tapes (all 15ips 2 track), only two companies, Tape Project and Acoustic Sounds, licenses great old tapes, using master tapes from decades ago. The rest use up and coming artists or lesser known orchestras or groups. What, I think is amazing, is that Ed Pong has in the past few years been able to record some of the very top current artists. How is that determined? Currently, the best way to measure the talent of young classical artists is to see what competitions they have entered and how they have done. The three main artists featured in these tapes have each won the very top competitions in the world. Alena Baeva won the Wieniawski Competition (awarded every five years) in 2001 at the age of 16 (the same competition where the great Ginette Neveu beat David Oistrakh when she was 16 years old in 1935). She went on to win two more international competitions, the Moscow Paganini Competition and the Sendai Competition in Tokyo. Vadym won the Van Cliburn piano competition in 2013 (awarded every four years) and Harek Nakhnazaryan won the Tchaikovsky Cello Competition in 2013 (awarded every four years) .
Narek's three tapes exhibit Ed's typically outstanding sonics that he captures in his home concert venue (before a live audience). Narek played a varied program with Noreen Polera his accompanist over the past decade (who won the Tchaikovsky accompanist prize herself). My favorite is the rarely heard Grieg Cello Sonata, a piece of great emotional beauty. A second reel is composed of two pieces by Beethoven, the Variations on a theme from Mozart's Magic Flute - "Bei Mannern", and one of my favorite cello sonatas, the great A major Op.69. Finally, there are some transcriptions of Chopin pieces and the famous Paganini Moses Variations. Here is a youtube of Narek playing the piece at the Moscow Conservatory in 2008 when he was a student.
Notice that the entire piece is played on one string (the G string). Notice one of the comments on the youtube is from famed cellist Lynn Harrell!
If I were to get one tape, I would start with the Grieg Sonata, followed by the Chopin/Paganini. But my favorite pieces are the two Beethovens, so I got all three!
Larry