Three modern recordings of the D minor Piano Concerto on period instruments have now appeared here since the beginning of the year. The Bilson/Gardiner series on Archiv Produktion has been under way for some time, proceeding chronologically, and has just reached the early months of 1785, when Mozart completed the Concertos in D minor and C major, K466 and 467, and began to expand the range and depth, of his piano concertos in the direction of a fuller symphonic grandeur and a new emotional weight. As listed above, the most recent Bilson/Gardiner record is a pairing of these works.
But how good it is to have some newcomers in the field. The differences between these three recordings of the D minor are perhaps more striking than the similarities. This may cause consternation, I know, among people who have already decided which are the true paths to be followed through the uncharted territories of period-instrument performance, but the rest of us are likely to find the divergences stimulating. In this field of endeavour the mature Mozart piano concertos are still unconquered peaks, in spite of one or two notable attempts over the years; and there is surely everything to be said for activity now by as many competent explorers as possible.
The new Philips from the American pianist John Gibbons and Frans Bruggen's Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century derives from public performances: so straightaway a difference is to be noted there in comparison with the studio recordings of Bilson/Gardiner (London, St John's Smith Square) and Lubin/Wilson (Rutgers Church, New York). You would be hard put to it, however to detect the presence of an audience on the Philips and there is no applause. But the main differences between the three CDs stem from the size of the orchestras. In the booklet of the American Arabesque, nine violinists are listed among a string strength of 14; Gardiner favours 12 among 22 while Bruggen has no less than 18 and strings numbering 32 in all, including three double-basses. The fuller 'big-band' sonority of his Dutch ensemble is very striking; and in this respect it is closer, of course, to the sound of conventional chamber orchestras. The Philips is again the most conventional in matters of microphone balance as its provenance from public concerts would lea you to expect. The perspectives are taken from life, as it were; alas, in the D minor Concerto the detail in the picture isn't always in focus. The chattering dialogue between wind instruments and piano in the finale is an example of this, and here and elsewhere there's often too much flute. Well, you take what comes. The Archiv is much more obviously a studio job. There, all the wind are very forward, too forward for me, and the thwack of the kettledrums and Gardiner's whip-crack contrasts of piano and forte also seem to have been pointed up with a bit of artifice. But the presence and allure of the Archiv sound is exciting and a good match for the style of the highly disciplined English Baroque Soloists.
And the pianos? All three are modern replicas of instruments by Anton Walter, the maker whom Mozart favoured from the early 1780s on. The one used by John Gibbons derives from a later example of about 1795, however, which allows him to give a fine account of the cadenzas (edited here and there so as not to go beyond a top G) that Beethoven composed for the D minor Concerto; the other pianists provide their own cadenzas. On the three issues, then, the piano sound is Viennese and close to what Mozart is known to have liked. When you accustom yourself to it, you perceive it to be capable of a perhaps surprising range of colour, and there is no question—it seems to me—of its being inadequate to convey the expressive range of the music. The dynamic range is of course more circumscribed than that of the modern piano. You have to accept that most of the more brilliant writing will never register in such high relief as one is used to. I think it is the Archiv which presents the piano most vividly, and Malcolm Bilson, a very skilled practitioner, is adept at showing just what the instrument can do in terms of colour and blending and dynamic contrast and in modulating between the roles of obbligato, solo and accompaniment, as required. Even so, there are times when his passage-work goes under. It would have done so in Mozart's day, but you may be disconcerted. When it comes to projecting all the force of the stormy middle section of the Romance, the comparative weakness of the high treble of the early piano is certainly a disadvantage. With his smaller band, Steven Lubin is the most successful here, Bilson and Gibbons do what they can but are over-parted, by the wind especially, and they give us only a rather generalized view of the writing. From time to time that may be your impression of them elsewhere in the concerto. If you insist in the D minor on hearing as much of the piano part as possible, you will probably be happiest with Steven Lubin on the Arabesque.
But performances of Mozart concertos are made by the quality of the soloist, above all. Lubin plays well but his account of the D minor doesn't strike me as a distinguished one. His first movement has a rather obvious restless energy and too little differentiation: he gives us not enough of the colour and the play of the drama. And his second movement, the middle section apart, is a weightless kind of piece, Biedermeierisch. Bilson, too, is on the light side in the Romance, though much better; and he decorates it prettily, if you like that kind of thing. I prefer him in the outer movements, where his rather nervy style is nicely in place and where Gardiner supports him with a strongly purposeful and dramatic view of the music. As a whole, their performance runs very well. I regret the pianist's wrong note in bar 97 of the first movement, but all in all this is the most satisfying of the three versions of the D minor Concerto I've been listening to. It is a pity that Gibbons's achievement with Bruggen's marvellous orchestra is vitiated by the recording.
The other concertos on the new issues—the A major, K488 and the C minor, K491—are, I think, superior achievements on the part of the two pianists and very interesting indeed. For the A major, Lubin's orchestra is reduced still further to 11 string players—only six violins. The string sound is the most plangent and 'different' yet; and the seven wind and the piano balance with it perfectly—you can hear every note. The way the clarinets colour the work, which is so often commented upon, has never to my ears sounded so fresh, indeed startling. The small forces generate an intimate scale of expression, which is appropriate, but the scale is well filled out, with plenty of vigour to the playing and depth to the sonority. I should have liked a wider and better defined range of dynamics from the orchestra, but this is a venture which has been thought through and, by and large, most successfully brought off, by the recording team too. Do hear it. 'Authentic' is not a word in my critical book, but I'm impressed here by an unusually bold attempt to re-create a great Mozart work on period instruments.
Boldest and best, however, I've left to last. Fortunately for us, Philips have succeeded in recording Gibbons and Bruggen much better in the C minor Concerto than in the other, or at any rate have arrived at a much more satisfactory mix-down. The results are splendid. The orchestra, as before, is sizeable and capable of a lot of weight in tutti; but it is the wind who steal the show. The colouring of the serenade-like wind writing in the episodes of the Larghetto cries out for mention, oboes in the first contrasting with clarinets in the second; but it is the balance of the wind lines against the piano in the first movement, particularly in the development, that is revelatory. Hear for yourself! In all this the quality of Bruggen's direction is exceptional. Is he not without peer in this field? The more I listen to his records, the more I think so. I admire, too, his uncommonly authoritative soloist, for what could be glimpsed of John Gibbons's quality in the D minor Concerto is at last made manifest. In the opening movement some of his attempts at gravitas lead him to exaggeration, but I warm to his seriousness and applaud his ability to interpret and lead us through a series of connected events in a long and complex movement, which includes his own excellent cadenza. Throughout the concerto he has an eloquent presence. Finally, let me note that he plays what I take to be his own version of part of the second variation of the finale, where Mozart's autograph has left the piano part in a horrible mess; that there's a moment of untidiness in the accompaniment at bar 67 in the Larghetto, where Gibbons wants to be reflective and the strings move on, and that there's a premature entry by one of the double-basses before bar 209 in the first movement—thanks to multi-tracking this doesn't prove to be the domino it might have been. Let me add too that after a very good first-movement coda—where Mozart's inspiration made such an impression on Beethoven—there's a ritardando in the closing bars which is otiose (or for me at least too pronounced). The rest is accomplishment and interpretation on a high level, and great refreshment for the spirit. Refreshment for the mind as well.'