This release has already been examined and positively in one of
Brian Wilson’s excellent Download Roundups, in this case for
November
2011. The actual discs come in one of those appealingly chunky
clamshell boxes, and my only complaint with the presentation is
that the track listings are not given on the back of the cardboard
sleeves for the discs so you have to refer to the booklet to find
out what you are listening to. This booklet is very nicely produced,
with extensive texts in English, German and French, and some nice
photos of the artists, orchestra and choir.
The plush red colour of the box and contents reflects luxuriant
sound from the recordings. The Leeds Town Hall acoustic is pretty
huge but as my mate Graham of Leeds has testified, the sound engineers
have tamed it pretty well. He is a horn player and knows the location
from both sides of the divide, and I’ve seen the place as well
and know what he means. The piano is close but not discomfortingly
so, and while the orchestra does come off second best it does
have just enough presence to make the balance sort-of believable.
The piano sound is very full and rich, with plenty of satisfying
bass to rouse the interest of audiophiles. I am told the superb
Orchestra of Opera North and Howard Shelley’s working relationship
was very good indeed, and it would have to be, with the soloist
not only dealing with Beethoven’s sometimes punishing piano writing
but also directing the orchestra from the keyboard – something
we see more often with earlier classical composers such as Mozart
but rarely with Beethoven. Howard Shelley has already cut his
teeth as a conductor in Beethoven, with both the
Piano Concerto
No.4 and the
Triple Concerto appearing under his baton
with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on the Membran label in
2002.
As Brian Wilson pointed out, it is an invidious task trying to
choose a ‘best’ set of Beethoven’s concertos. I appreciated Evgeny
Kissin’s EMI cycle (see
review)
when it came my way, but can’t say I’ve been playing it a great
deal since. Mikhail Pletnev is more exciting on Deutsche Grammophon
(see
review),
but perhaps won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Classic versions abound,
and many of them will always have their place no matter which
newcomers arrive on the scene. It is not only the sheer completeness
of Howard Shelley’s set which recommends it however. The earlier
concertos are given stately nobility and a fragrant lightness
of touch as well as their correct allocation of drama, the tempo
opening the
Piano Concerto No.1 being more measured than
some but leaving room for a commanding cadenza. There is plenty
of poetry in the central
Largo, which somehow becomes an
almost endless landscape without dragging in the least. The final
Rondo is rousingly weighty, with a swing given to those
off-beat accents which is quite infectious. CD 1 pairs this with
the
Concerto No.4, and once again Shelley gives the first
movement plenty of time to develop, providing space and air to
music which develops organically and inexorably like a living
thing. I must say I really like this approach, which again is
by no means really ‘slow’ as such – Shelley brings the first movement
in at 18:36 to Kissin’s 20:55, but while he doesn’t pull the music
around too much there is the sense of an experienced master at
work: one who knows exactly the right way to pace the whole thing,
allowing it to really sing without overdue haste or unnecessary
wallowing. The remarkable
Andante con moto is done very
nicely in this recording, with its declamatory, almost hectoring
orchestral gestures and the soloist engaged in a prayer of his
own. The expectancy which opens the last movement delivers in
terms of impact and excitement later on. The
Rondo WoO 6 is
thought to be the original finale to the
Piano Concerto No.2,
but programming your player to try it as an alternative isn’t
an option as it appears at the end of the 1
st and 4
th
concertos. One of the features of this programme is the elevation
of neglected or ‘lesser’ works to equal status with the usual
canon of the five piano concertos, and this
Rondo turns
out to be something a bit special, with stereotypical classical
gestures mixed in with some remarkably ebullient rhetoric and
plenty of exploratory diversions from the expected. This is something
of a ‘work in progress’, and by no means one of Beethoven’s best
creations, but remains a fascinating and quirky one for all that.
CD 2 pairs the
Piano Concerto No.2 – the first composed
of the numbered concertos, with the last, the
Piano Concerto
No. 5. As Brian Wilson has already stated, there aren’t any
revelations as such in these performances, but there is a clarity
in their intent and delivery which has its own tendency to lift
up stones and shine lights on aspects of the music with integrity
and a sense of truth which is inescapable. The youthful
Piano
Concerto No. 2 sounds just like that, scampering up and down
in the opening
Allegro con brio and the final
Rondo
with kittenish energy, and sighing with unrequited love in
the central
Adagio. The ‘Emperor’ concerto is a high point
in any such cycle, and so it is here. Where the pairing of the
Concertos 1 & 4 on CD 1 to a certain extent pointed
out familial relationships and similarities, hearing the 5
th
after the
Concerto No. 2 shows up contrast. Beethoven’s
earlier experiment with convention is set against the defining
of a new language of defiance and the treatment of the piano concerto
as a quasi-symphonic utterance rather than mainly a dialogue between
soloist and orchestra. Shelley shows us the equality of the soloist
and the rest of the instruments, how they are both united and
pitted against each other in conflict and confluence. The piano
has to climb a high wall in the opening
Allegro, but while
the massed orchestra offers both resistance and comfortable footholds,
you always have the feeling that there is sunshine on the soloist’s
back. The hard-won
Adagio un poco mosso is a verdant oasis,
from which emerges a mighty
Rondo, Shelley’s hyper-piano
now leading the way for the orchestra which sounds a bit meek
by comparison at the outset. It’s all pretty convincing though,
and I love the differences in texture given to the various tonalities
traversed, even though it loses steam a little here and there.
This second CD ends with a short talk given by Howard Shelley,
which has some fascinating insights and is illustrated with musical
snippets which build on Beethoven’s surprisingly close association
with Mozart, and repays listening to more than once.
Howard Shelley points out the similarities of the minor-key
Piano
Concerto No.3 with Mozart’s
Concerto KV 491, also in
C minor, and this might contribute to a Mozartean ‘vibe’ in the
performance, which has a very up-beat feel from the outset. Shelley
gives plenty of weight to the dramas being played out within the
score, but maintains a luminosity of touch which is very appealing.
The atmosphere in the central
Largo is subdued, but with
a magical aura which makes it feel like the centre of a very special
universe, and its nature emphasised by the joyous feel of both
outer movements. This is followed by the
Piano Concerto Op.61,
arranged by Beethoven from the
Violin Concerto and by no
means unknown in collections of the piano concertos. Shelley again
gives the work plenty of space and largesse, bringing out all
of the melodic lines with graceful shapeliness. The piano version
of this concerto is never really going to rival the potential
it has in the hands of the best violinists, but this is as convincing
a version as I can recall hearing, with a central
Larghetto
in which time seems to stand still.
With the final disc of the set we have some less familiar treats.
As I mentioned before, the less easily categorised works are to
a certain extent the stars of this collection, being most certainly
given equality of status and attention to detail in terms of performance.
The
Choral Fantasia Op.80 was written as the finale for
a grand benefit concert in 1808, and Beethoven pulls out all the
stops in a tremendous if overly-long build-up through exploratory
solo passages, diverse variations, and that remarkable choral
climax which is a pre-echo to the 9
th Symphony. This
performance isn’t as granite-tough in the beginning as Barenboim
in his classic recording with Otto Klemperer and the New Philharmonic
Orchestra on EMI, but is juicier at heart and a delight from beginning
to end, and with the addition of the fine Opera North singers
as the ultimate resource to top the whole thing off. The vocal
soloists’ entry after 14:45 worth of instrumental material is
indeed an electrifying effect, and this is a recording which gives
us a new reference for this piece. The
Piano Concerto WoO4
receives its première recording here, having been reconstructed
from a piano part and a few instrumental cues. This piece would
have been written when Beethoven was about 12 or 13 years of age,
and certainly shows the burgeoning of a great deal of talent.
The piano part is in fact quite technically demanding, with the
orchestra often echoing or adding little brushes of colour to
the busy solo. As an early work there are no expectations other
than of prodigious potential, and other than finding that the
finale is a rondo exactly as with all the other concertos, there
are few if any moments where the name Beethoven would spring to
mind on a blind hearing. This is however very much
not Mozart
or any other individually recognisable musical forebear, and therefore
has plenty of oddity to keep the listener engaged. Beethoven’s
eclectic gathering and filtering of the influences he would have
encountered by his early teens result in a sparkly and not unattractive
work, though I doubt it is anything which will become common currency
in concert programmes.
We round off this complete experience with the
Triple Concerto
which, while not entirely the
Tripe Concerto the famous
typo would have us imagine, is another of Beethoven’s works which
is shorter on moments of genius than the best of the other concertos,
and with fees due to three soloists rather than one can be something
of an expensive option for concert organisers. The Chandos engineers
reward us with a rich sound for the three soloists, and Tim Hugh’s
cello is particularly expressive and superlatively gorgeous in
the opening of the central
Largo. Hugh has appeared in
this piece before in a highly regarded recording on the LSO Live
label conducted by Bernard Haitink. This Chandos recording beats
the LSO one for sound, with the dry Barbican acoustic like a dead
hand on so many recordings which emerge from that source, and
to my mind this recording is the equal of any other I could name,
including most of the old favourites which have already been around
for years gathering legendary status like moss on a non-rolling
stone. There is a certain amount of ‘period’ non-use of vibrato
at certain points, which I feel is a nice touch – relaxing certain
passages in contrast to the tensions and dramas in others. This
is a genuinely red-blooded performance as well as a particularly
sensitive one, and the wide separation of the string soloists
helps with clarity and the ability to follow the musical arguments.
Both Little and Hugh have a light touch most of the time, which
means the curse of ‘scrubbing’ is lifted in the outer movements.
They match each other well throughout, creating a nice chamber-music
feel to the trio despite its setting in front of a substantial
orchestra and a big acoustic.
This is the kind of set which comes along once every few years,
generating a new point of focus in your collection and supplanting
numerous versions of older items. While not detached or boringly
predictable, Howard Shelley’s approach is arguably cooler than
some, and there will always be a place for all of those great
recordings of individual concertos we can still find available.
Of the recent competitors, Paul Lewis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
on the Harmonia Mundi label is a very strong contender, but even
in this case the sense or warm humanity and wit Howard Shelley
brings to the music trumps even this. For my own experience this
has become a box with its own little centre of gravity, pulling
me back on a regular basis to hear that generous sound and all
that marvellous musicianship, as well as some of Beethoven’s best
music. As a one-stop collection it is unbeatable, and we are truly
fortunate that it also happens to be a superlative choice with
no also-ran ‘fillers’ and no real weak points in just about every
aspect of its production.
Dominy Clements
Tasmin Little (violin)† Tim Hugh (cello)†
