These are live recordings
made by Antes in the Concert Hall of
Iasi State Philharmonic in Romania and
date from 1997 and 1999. The recording
is not ideal; rather cold and inclined
to emphasise or exaggerate a fault of
Jetter’s in the concerto, which is excessive
banging. For a German pianist who has
studied extensively in Moscow I have
to say I found his point of view hard
to reconcile and some details struck
me as overly exaggerated; in this of
all concertos a degree of control is
preferable to point-making. As I said
Jetter seems to be forcing his tone
and his piano doesn’t sound entirely
happy either, getting slightly out of
tune as the concerto develops. His technique
however is formidable – hardly any dropped
notes. But what concerned me were the
odd accents, the unsubtle rhythms, the
very slow cadenza and his generally
erratic treatment of the movement as
a whole; he seems to want to take Horowitz’s
externals without having digested his
implacable control in this work. The
strings aren’t opulent in the slow movement
and in the finale we get some staccato,
rather military clipped playing from
the pianist. Winds are distant; the
studio engineers seem to tweak dynamic
levels in the first movement rather
too abruptly.
The coupling doesn’t
benefit from the close-up acoustic perspective,
which tends to limit its visceral power.
The contours here are better drawn but
the orchestra isn’t in the first rank
and can’t colour or point with the kind
of drama that will be expected.
Jonathan Woolf
Andreas Jetter (piano) 
