Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4
Gramophone Choice
Piano Concertos Nos 4 & 5, ‘Emperor’
Emil Gilels (pf) Philharmonia Orchestra / Leopold Ludwig
Testament SBT1095 (73' · ADD). Recorded 1957. Buy from Amazon
This is one of the most – perhaps the most – perfect accounts of the Fourth Concerto recorded. Poetry and virtuosity are held in perfect poise, with Ludwig and the Philharmonia providing a near-ideal accompaniment. The recording is also very fine, though be sure to gauge the levels correctly by first sampling one of the tuttis. If the volume is set too high at the start, you’ll miss the stealing magic of Gilels’s and the orchestra’s initial entries and you’ll be further discomfited by tape hiss.
The recording of the Emperor Concerto is also pretty good, not quite on a par with that of the Fourth. Ludwig and the orchestra tend to follow Gilels rather than always integrate with him and there are times, too, especially in the slow movement, when Gilels’s playing borders on the self-indulgent. This isn’t, however, sufficient reason for overlooking this fine and important reissue.
Additional Recommendations
Piano Concertos – No 4; in D, Op 61a
Ronald Brautigam (pf) Norrköping Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Parrott
BIS BIS-SACD1693 (68’ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
‘I truly believe that what the composer wanted was chamber music rather than a battle between orchestra and soloist.’ So claims Ronald Brautigam in a brief but informative booklet interview, which helps explain why the ‘Orpheus placating the Furies’ slow movement of the Fourth Concerto sounds more like a brisk telling-off. Still, it fits the mood of the performance which, aside from the expected lightness of touch (a Steinway D played with admirable bounce and precision), introduces some additional filigree that Barry Cooper has deciphered from manuscript annotations that show what actual notes Beethoven may have played at the work’s 1808 premiere.
The first signs of change arrive around six minutes into the first movement when a descending scale is embellished with trills followed by some very decorative tinkling before a brief visit to the minor and a return to an exuberant statement of the lovely second theme. And that’s just for openers: there are plenty more textual surprises – in the development section, for example, and in the finale. The key issue seems to be: if this Cooper ‘revision’ was the version that you had always known and someone came up with the now-familiar published score as an alternative, would you then prefer the published score? Almost certainly the answer would be ‘yes’. Most listeners would probably agree, but hearing this animated and intelligently voiced performance (no vibrato among the strings by the way) at least poses the question, as well as presenting an interestingly ornate variant on a much-loved musical text.
The CD also offers us a very crisp reading of the piano version of the Violin Concerto, which works well apart from the re-entry into the main body of the first movement after Beethoven’s admittedly ingenious cadenza, a moment that only really works its magic on the violin. That aside, the sound is beautifully balanced, with Brautigam’s lidless piano set well within the orchestra.
Piano Concertos – Nos 4 & 5, ‘Emperor’
Yevgeny Sudbin (pf) Minnesota Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä
BIS BIS-SACD1758 (70’ · DDD/DSD) Buy from Amazon
Yevgeny Sudbin and Osmo Vänskä here launch their Beethoven concerto cycle in a novel and intriguing fashion. Sudbin makes it clear that he has little use for Beethoven weighed down, as it were, with excess baggage, with the heft and earnestness of a more conventional view. Instead, his delectably light-fingered brilliance and virtuosity shine a new light on some of the most familiar scores in the repertoire.
True, listeners used to a greater intensity and expansiveness may balk at the nervy rapidity of Sudbin’s reflexes, recalling the greater ease and breadth of past masters of the Beethoven concertos such as Gilels or Arrau, or the more speculative or interior stance of, say, Radu Lupu. But if Sudbin occasionally suggests ‘time’s winged chariot hurrying near’, the mother-of-pearl sheen of his pianism is backed by a special underlying sensitivity. In the grandest of Beethoven’s two cadenzas for the Fourth Concerto, Sudbin’s spine-tingling pace takes him close to the edge; but hearing him in the phantom entry to the Emperor Concerto’s finale reminds you that you are listening to a wholly individual artist. Such mercurial pianism keeps Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra on their toes but they follow their soloist as to the manner born. BIS’s sound and balance are excellent.
