These interesting and highly recommendable accounts of the (actual) first
of Beethoven's piano concertos, No. 2, and its successor, No.1, have a freshness
together with comfortable rapport between conductor and soloist, one of the
most individual and thoughtful of young piano virtuosos. The balance between
solo and orchestra is finely judged, and the piano playing has a light, airy
quality that is particularly winning. The recording was made in the University
of Warwick's Butterworth Hall and the recording quality is first rate. (No
comparison with the multitude of alternative recordings is attempted here.)
The presentation is unusual, with a bonus CD of the C major concerto with
Glenn Gould's cadenzas instead of Beethoven's. own. Gould's approach to this
task is described in Oliver Buslau's liner notes, and also in a note by Glen
Gould himself (1955) in which he explains his desire to sustain the formal
line of the movements with an organic expansion of the material, rather than
a 'rhapsodic digression'. He developed the motives with a chromatic style
more intense than early Beethoven, that for the finale as 'a dynamic
decrescendo'.
The arrangement gives you a straight choice to play the whole concerto with
one or other set of cadenzas - it might have been preferable to keep the
two together, indexing the cadenzas as separate tracks, though that would
have necessitated brief gaps for one or other version. For those who wish
to make straight comparisons for study purposes, the first movement cadenza
occurs at 12'23" and the last one at 6'00". The Gould cadenza is 3 minutes
shorter than Beethoven's (the longest in all his concertos) in the first
movement, and half a minute longer in the last. My impression is that the
music with orchestra is the same performance, just digitally spliced differently.
(The slow movement has the identical duration 10'45".) It is characteristic
of Lars Vogt's thoughtful approach to the piano repertoire that he sought
out those cadenzas and persuaded EMI to let him record them.
Reviewer
Peter Grahame Woolf
Lars Vogt
& City of Birmingham Orchestra/Rattle
