Beethoven's Complete Piano Concertos
Beethoven's Piano Concertos
Gramophone Choice
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (pf) Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Teldec 0927 47334-2 (184' · DDD) Recorded live 2000-02. Buy from Amazon
The freshness of this set is remarkable. You do not have to listen far to be swept up by its spirit of renewal and discovery, and in Pierre-Laurent Aimard as soloist Harnoncourt has made an inspired choice. Theirs aren’t eccentric readings of these old warhorses – far from it. But they could be called idiosyncratic – from Harnoncourt would you have expected anything else?
These are modern performances which have acquired richness and some of their focus from curiosity about playing styles and sound production of the past. Harnoncourt favours leaner string textures than the norm and gets his players in the excellent COE to command a wide range of expressive weight and accent; this they do with an immediacy of effect that’s striking. Yet there’s a satisfying body to the string sound, too.
The playing seems to have recourse to eloquence without having to strive for it, and that’s characteristic of Aimard’s contribution as well. Strong contrasts are explored and big moments encompassed as part of an unforced continuity in which nothing is hurried. The big moments do indeed stand out: one of them is the famous exchange of dramatic gestures between piano and orchestra in the development of the Fifth Concerto’s first movement; another the equally dramatic but very different exchange when the piano re-enters at the start of the development in the first movement of the Fourth Concerto. At these junctures, conductor and pianist allow the gestures to disrupt the rhythmic continuity. Over the top? No, but risky maybe, and if you’ve strong views about what Beethoven’s rubrics permit, or have swallowed a metronome, you may react strongly. For make no mistake, Aimard is as intrepid an explorer here as Harnoncourt – by conviction, not simply by adoption.
Technically he’s superbly equipped. This is evident everywhere, but especially in the finales, brimful of spontaneous touches and delight in their eventfulness and in the pleasure of playing them. The finale of the Emperor tingles with a continuously vital, constantly modulated dynamic life that it rarely receives; so many players make it merely rousing. And among the first movements, that of the Fourth Concerto is a quite exceptional achievement for the way Harnoncourt and his soloist find space for the fullest characterisation of the lyricism and diversity of the solo part – Aimard begins almost as if improvising the opening statement, outside time – while integrating these qualities with the larger scheme. It’s the most complex movement in the concertos and he manages to make it sound both directional and free as a bird.
The first movement of the Fifth Concerto is nearly as good, lacking only the all-seeing vision and authority Brendel (with Rattle – reviewed below) brings to it, and perhaps a touch of Brendel’s ability to inhabit and define its remoter regions. In general, Aimard imposes himself as a personality less than Brendel. In spite of being different exercises, their distinction touches at several points and is comparable in degree. What Aimard doesn’t match is the variety of sound and the amplitude of Brendel’s expressiveness in the first two concertos’ slow movements. Balances are good, with the piano placed in a concert-hall perspective.
This set balances imagination and rigour, providing much delight and refreshment, and playing that will blow you away.
Additional Recommendations
Paul Lewis (pf) BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jiří Bĕlohlávek
Harmonia Mundi HMC90 2053/5 (176’ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Harmonia Mundi’s eagerly awaited set is a superlative achievement: Lewis’s partnership with Jiří Bĕlohlávek is an ideal match of musical feeling, vigour and refinement. True, for aficionados of eccentricity – even of brilliant eccentricity – Lewis may at times seem overly restrained but the rewards of such civilised, musically responsible and vital playing seem infinite. Above all, there is no sense of an artist looking over his shoulder to see what other pianists have come up with.
Throughout the cycle, Lewis is enviably and naturally true to his own distinctive lights, his unassuming but shining musicianship always paramount. His stylistic consistency can make the singling-out of this or that detail irrelevant, yet how could one fail to mention Lewis and Bĕlohlávek’s true sense of the Allegro con brio in the First Concerto, in music-making that is vital but never driven? Less rugged than some, such playing is no less personal and committed. In the central Largo Lewis achieves a quiet, hauntingly sustained poise and eloquence, while in the finale his crisp articulation sends Beethoven’s early ebullience dancing into captivating life.
The same virtues characterise the Second Concerto; but when it comes to the Third, Lewis and Bĕlohlávek (and one is always aware of a true partnership) hit a more controversial note. The first movement is less con brio than from most, as if to emphasise Beethoven’s step towards a darker region of the imagination, while the finale is thought-provoking in its restraint. Yet once again Lewis’s comprehensive mastery is devoid of all overt display, and in the Fourth Concerto his playing achieves a rare nimbleness, affection and transparency. Nor is there a hint of strain or strenuous characterisation in the Fifth Concerto. Lewis’s first entry in the Adagio has a slight catch in the voice, as it were, to register the music’s sublimity, and his overall approach is devoid of the tub-thumping rhetoric familiar from too many Emperors.
And so, all in all, these records take their place among the finest Beethoven piano concerto performances. Balance and sound are natural and exemplary. This is a cycle to live with and revisit.
Evgeny Kissin (pf) London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Colin Davis
EMI 206311-2 (3h’ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
It has been clear for some time that Evgeny Kissin is a Beethoven player of rare pedigree and distinction, the finest Russian-born Beethovenian since Emil Gilels. In 1996 he recorded the Second and Fifth concertos in performances of flair and élan with the Philharmonia under James Levine (Sony). His playing was vital and fluent, the technique awesome, not least his ability to refine tone and taper dynamics in those high-lying passages where Beethoven’s expressive powers are at their most rarefied.
The new recordings were made in 2007 at Abbey Road and it must be said that the piano sound is a thing of quite exceptional beauty, well forward though not unpleasingly so. Doubts linger about the handling of the difficult-to-judge orchestral ritornellos that launch the three earliest concertos. The playing has a slightly sullen feel to it, set back on its heels rhythmically, that Kissin’s arrival decisively transforms. Was there at the outset a gap in expectation between the orchestra and its soloist? If so, it quickly dissolves as the real music-making gets under way.
Nowadays Sir Colin is more in love with the music’s lyric aspect, audibly so at times. The unfurling of the strings’ rapt eight-bar rejoinder to the piano’s opening statement in the Fourth Concerto can rarely have been more memorably realised. After such an opening, Kissin has every right to spend the next 20 minutes contemplating the heavens in his own uniquely affecting way, ably abetted by his attentive accompanists.
Despite Davis’s slowish tempo, Kissin announces himself in the Second Concerto with playing of great brilliance and vernal loveliness. The entire performance is a success, not least the finale where Kissin throws down the gauntlet to the orchestra with a driving molto allegro that sets up to perfection a typically Beethovenian jest in which high seriousness is made to crook its knee to the life-affirming power of play.
Kissin also sets a cracking pace in the Rondo of the rather grander First Concerto, though is this a true allegro scherzando? Beethoven loved to shock but after a slowish albeit beautifully articulated opening movement (where Kissin aptly and intriguingly uses Beethoven’s shorter, second cadenza) and a sublime account of the Largo, this rabid assault on the finale rather unbalances the whole.
There is no such lack of balance in the Third Concerto on which many a pianist-conductor combination has come to grief. Once past that rather dourly played ritornello, Kissin and Davis realise the concerto as well as some and better than many.
We know from their earlier recordings how fine both soloist and conductor are in the Emperor Concerto and this new version does not disappoint. Kissin’s realisation of the big opening cadenza is broadly phrased in the Russian manner, subtler and less extreme than Pletnev in his recent DG recording.
As in the Fourth Concerto, the agogic freedom Kissin allows himself in moments of visionary meditation is underwritten both by the orchestra and his own capacity to return swiftly and pointedly to the tempo primo.
A sterner producer might have persuaded Davis to provide a grunt-free start to the string recitative that begins the slow movement of the Fourth Concerto. The exchanges, stilted at first, shed self‑consciousness as the dialogue evolves and quietens. And the finale is a delight, the scherzando and visionary elements held in perfect balance. (An unlooked-for bonus is the fact that the set is being offered at budget price!)
Richard Goode (pf) Budapest Festival Orchestra / Iván Fischer
Nonesuch 7559 79928-3 (168’ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
This is not a set that immediately fires the imagination, nor is it in all respects a perfectly ‘finished’ production. That said, it contains fine accounts of the elusive Third Concerto and the imperturbably splendid Fifth.
The two early concertos receive disappointing performances. Though Fischer and his Budapest players provide brisk, no-nonsense support, soloist Richard Goode appears to be in the grip of a self-denying ordinance, happy to provide an accurate tally of the notes but not much inclined to report upon them. Narrowness of dynamic and expressive range is complemented by a similar narrowness of dramatic vision.
In the Third Concerto the clouds lift. Here is freshness and attack, real poetry in the first movement development, a recapitulation that matters and a superbly calibrated account of Beethoven’s built-in cadenza. In the finale of the Third, there is nothing daemonic. Rather, there is a sense of an uncomplicated dance to the music of time. Richard Goode’s way with the opening of the Fourth Concerto also has a somewhat balletic feel to it. His reading has a gracious, clean-cut quality which deserves a more aurally sensitive, less matter-of-fact accompaniment than it receives here from the Budapest players. In the slow movement, the orchestral summonses are given a strangely militaristic character.
After which, everything comes right in the Fifth Concerto. This is a straightforward performance of the old school, with clean symphonic lines and classy articulation from the soloist; one of those readings of the Emperor that manages to combine lightness of spirit with a proper sense of heroic endeavour.
The piano sound, dull-toned in the two early concertos, is brighter and more robust in the later works without being absolutely in the first flight of excellence.
Murray Perahia (pf) Concertgebouw Orchestra / Bernard Haitink
Sony Classical S3K44575 (178' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Perahia’s account of the Third Concerto is a joy from start to finish, wonderfully conceived, executed, conducted and recorded. The single issue, coupled with this account of the Fourth Concerto, began life by winning the 1986 Gramophone Concerto Award. In these two concertos, and in the two earlier ones, Perahia and Haitink are difficult to fault. The First Concerto is especially well done with a quick first movement and the apt and delightful inclusion in the finale of a cadenza that Beethoven sketched in 1800. If Perahia is anywhere slightly below par it’s in the Emperor Concerto. The reading gives us an emergent view of the work, undiscursive but perhaps at times lacking in a certain largeness of vision and purpose. For that we must return to Kempff or Arrau, which only confirms the pitfalls of buying cycles rather than separate performances. However, the Perahia cycle is one of the most consistently accomplished of those currently available; the recordings are a joy to listen to.
Piano Concertos Nos 1-5. Choral Fantasia in C minor, Op 80
Daniel Barenboim (pf) John Alldis Choir; New Philharmonia Orchestra / Otto Klemperer
EMI 361525-2 (3h 31‘ · ADD). Recorded 1967. Buy from Amazon
Klemperer had done concert cycles, perhaps most memorably in London in the 1950s with Claudio Arrau, but his decision to record the piano concertos at the age of 82 came as a result of his admiration for the most precociously talented of all young Beethoven pianists at the time, Daniel Barenboim. Barenboim was 25 and about to embark on what was to be an exceptionally fine cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas. He was steeped in Beethoven and perhaps peculiarly well suited to the concertos which, we should not forget, are essentially a young man’s music. It was a fascinating pairing, Klemperer and Barenboim contrasted in age and to some extent in temperament but at the same time symbiotically at one musically. Had this not been the case, Barenboim would have been swamped, lost in the wash of Klemperer’s accompaniments which deliver the orchestral argument and the orchestral detail with an articulacy and authority unique in the history of these works on record.
The performance of the Second Concerto, the first historically if not numerically, is a typical joy, full of fire and grace and unstoppably vital. Given Klemperer’s propensity for taking slow tempi in Beethoven, you might imagine him being taken for a ride by the young Barenboim in the finales of the first two concertos. But not a bit of it. It’s Klemperer, as much as his youthful soloist, who seems to be the driving force here. Rarely on record has the slow movement of the First Concerto been played with so natural a sense of concentrated calm, the whole thing profoundly collected on the spiritual plane. One of the joys of the Barenboim/Klemperer cycle is its occasional unpredictability: rock-solid readings that none the less incorporate a sense of ‘today we try it this way’.
Ensemble is mostly first-rate during the cycle. The tricky coda of the first movement of the Third Concerto is both rapt and dramatic. But in the coda of the first movement of the Fourth there’s little doubt that Klemperer drags the pulse. And elsewhere there are some occasionally awkward adjustments to be made between soloist and orchestra. At the time of its initial appearance, the Emperor performance was generally adjudged a success. Again it’s broadly conceived. At first the finale seems a little staid; but later the 6/8 rhythms are made to dance and the performance has a burning energy by the end. So does the account of the Choral Fantasia. Given Klemperer’s magisterial style and authority, this set could have emerged as five symphonies with piano obbligato. In fact, it’s a set of rare authority and spontaneity, and given the slightly unconventional idea of the soloist as primus inter pares, it’s probably unique.
Alfred Brendel (pf) Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle
Philips 462 781-2PH3 (178' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Happily, Alfred Brendel’s fourth recorded cycle of the Beethoven piano concertos shares with the previous three qualities of energy, sensibility, intellectual rigour and high pianistic finish which made the earlier recordings so interesting. Brendel has always played all five slow movements supremely well, drawing the orchestra around him like a celebrant at the communion table and here we have even finer performances than previously.
In the two early concertos the Vienna Philharmonic’s playing has a sweetness and allure, in the grander, later works a black-browed power that’s specially its own. Brendel’s playing in the early concertos recalls his fine recordings of the early sonatas and the early and late Bagatelles, but it’s as a private person impatient with the conventions and frock-coated formalities of the concertos as ‘public’ works. With No 3 we move into a different world. This is a marvellous performance from all three partners, purposeful and robust, the tonic C minor the cue for a reading full of darkness and menace, basses to the fore, drums at the ready. The finale is particularly ominous (relieved only by a lustrous clarinet solo) after an account of the slow movement, full toned yet deeply quiet, the like of which is rarely heard. The C minor Concerto’s heroic antitype, the Emperor in E flat, fares less well. Not the slow movement or finale, but the first movement which is slower than previously, to no very good effect. Perhaps interpreters nowadays are less happy than their predecessors were with Beethoven’s heroic persona. Back in the private world of the Fourth Concerto, soloist, orchestra and conductor are at their inspired best. Brendel’s glittering, wonderfully propelled account of the solo part is superbly backed by playing of real fire and sensitivity. The recordings are first rate.
