REGER Piano Concerto (Becker)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: (Johann Baptist Joseph) Max(imilian) Reger
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Avi
Magazine Review Date: 05/2019
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 58
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: AVI8553933
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra |
(Johann Baptist Joseph) Max(imilian) Reger, Composer
(Johann Baptist Joseph) Max(imilian) Reger, Composer Joshua Weilerstein, Conductor Markus Becker, Piano North German Radio Symphony Orchestra |
Episodes (8 Piano Pieces for Big and Little People, Movement: Nos 1-5 |
(Johann Baptist Joseph) Max(imilian) Reger, Composer
(Johann Baptist Joseph) Max(imilian) Reger, Composer Markus Becker, Piano |
Lose Blätter, Movement: No 2, Choral |
(Johann Baptist Joseph) Max(imilian) Reger, Composer
(Johann Baptist Joseph) Max(imilian) Reger, Composer Markus Becker, Piano |
Author: Rob Cowan
The work opens to a crescendoing timpani roll and a darkly clouded initial tutti before the soloist announces himself with a virtuoso flourish. Here Becker faces formidable competition from Marc-André Hamelin (under Ilan Volkov), whose superb 2010 rendition places the concerto securely among the genre’s Romantic masterpieces. Trawling through available digital versions, Hamelin is the biggest player, while Gerhard Oppitz (under Horst Stein in a ‘Max Reger Orchestral Edition’ 12 disc set) offers marginally more breadth – his slow movement is glorious – and Becker projects the most obvious sense of play, especially in the finale, where his teasing rubato is quite unlike anyone else’s. Barry Douglas is another worthy exponent, coupled, like Hamelin, with Strauss’s Burleske, though he’s not quite so characterful as either Becker or Hamelin. You can, however, access his deeply affecting way with the slow movement via YouTube.
What I particularly like about this new recording is the way it promotes the idea of a concerto that has long been lived in, though Becker’s candid booklet note reveals initial doubts about the work (‘so many notes, all the dense chords …’), doubts triumphantly overcome, given the evidence. As to ‘historic’ options, three spring immediately to mind, Rudolf Serkin under Eugene Ormandy (Sony) and two impressive versions conducted by Hans Rosbaud with the pianists Erik Then-Bergh (APR, 2/17) and Eduard Erdmann (Orfeo, 10/07), the latter especially commanding in his first entry. But both Becker and Hamelin are credible digital front-runners, Becker the athletic thinker, Hamelin the thinking athlete. Joshua Weilerstein, like Volkov for Hamelin, seems at one with Reger’s plush, thick-set orchestral idiom and NDR’s sound is excellent.
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