BEETHOVEN Symphonies Nos 3 & 7. Piano Concerto No 4
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Ludwig van Beethoven
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Orfeo
Magazine Review Date: 09/2016
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 139
Mastering:
ADD
Catalogue Number: C901 162B
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hans Knappertsbusch, Conductor Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Wilhelm Backhaus, Piano |
Symphony No. 7 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hans Knappertsbusch, Conductor Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra |
Coriolan |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hans Knappertsbusch, Conductor Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra |
Symphony No. 3, 'Eroica' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hans Knappertsbusch, Conductor Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra |
Author: Richard Osborne
The performance of the Eroica dates from 1962. The other three items chronicle a concert Knappertsbusch conducted in the Vienna Musikverein in January 1954. The Coriolan Overture has been moved to the start of disc 2, where it prefaces the Eroica: a suitable juxtaposition since, in Knappertsbusch’s reading, it is a work of similar temper, the theatrical and philosophical elements held in the nicest possible balance.
It also means that disc 1 begins with the opening of the Fourth Piano Concerto, magically annunciated by Wilhelm Backhaus on one of his beloved Bösendorfers. Backhaus was one of the Fourth Concerto’s finest exponents, though rarely written of as such on this side of the English Channel. An exception was Hubert Foss. Writing in these pages, he commended Backhaus’s 1950 recording of the concerto with Clemens Krauss and the VPO (Decca, 1/52) for its artistic restraint ‘with the design of each movement beautifully laid out before us and no attempt at any kind of display on the part of the soloist’.
The wonder of this live 1954 Austrian Radio recording is that, while the performance itself is every bit as fine as the 1950 studio version, the recording is infinitely superior, with a warmth and body to the sound which the 1950 Decca recording conspicuously lacks. All in all, this is Backhaus’s finest account of the concerto on record. The only times he threatens to overturn the apple cart are in the two cadenzas, the first by Beethoven, the second an overlong affair by Backhaus himself.
The performance of the Seventh Symphony, with which the 1952 concert ended, is a law unto itself. Unlike Furtwängler, Knappertsbusch wasn’t much inclined to anchor his readings in analyses thought out ahead of time. Rather they appear to be fashioned out the Beethovenian clay on a somewhat ad hoc basis. Since this is a species of conducting you will seek out in vain today, the set is the perfect time-machine in which travel back to a riper, more ruminative age when speed and surface excitement did not entirely rule the roost.
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