MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Pyotr Il’yich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Piano Concerto No 2 in G, Op 44 [45:25]
Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Symphony No 9 in E flat, Op 70 [28:06]
Andreas Boyde (piano)
Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra/Johannes Fritzsch
rec. live, 13-14 January, 1997, Konzerthaus Freiburg, Germany
ATHENE ATHCD16 [73:31]

Experience Classicsonline

This disc preserves in the Athene label’s “Outstanding Concert Performance Series” a live program presented by the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra on 13 and 14 January, 1997. The back cover finds the concerto soloist, pianist Andreas Boyde, earning a much bigger, bolder credit than either orchestra or conductor (Johannes Fritzsch). A listen to the album reveals why: Boyde’s pianism is very much worthy of preservation on disc, the playing of the Freiburg Philharmonic less so.

Boyde and Fritzsch opt for a totally uncut of edition Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 2, and the performance is a great pleasure. Boyde sometimes missteps in his handling of the concerto’s ferocious runs, but no more so than Jerome Lowenthal did in his recently re-issued studio recordings, and at any rate Boyde’s playing is consistently enjoyable: he executes the gigantic first movement cadenza with flair, plays the second subject with touching subtlety, and makes an effective, low-key partner in the slow movement, with its extensive solos for violin and cello.

The lack of cuts is surely an attraction here: the slow movement, restored to its original length, has been recorded to my knowledge only by Lowenthal and Stephen Hough, in his new Hyperion traversal of all three concertos. Konstantin Scherbakov’s excellent Naxos reading removes about thirty seconds of material for what has traditionally been considered a more concise ending; older interpreters like Emil Gilels excise half the movement, thus gutting one of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful creations! Preferences for recordings of this concerto; Scherbakov’s account is fiery and explosive, with keyboard-rattling virtuosity, while Boyde is polished, laid-back, but never lazy. I have yet to hear the Hough account, but it sounds even faster and more furious than Scherbakov’s.

The Shostakovich Ninth Symphony finds Johannes Fritzsch and his orchestra on their own, and trouble sets in rapidly. Fritzsch’s one eccentricity is a fondness for slow tempos in the opening bars of individual movements; for two seconds, the opening of the Ninth - with steely, unpleasant violins - warns of a dull, interminable reading before an accelerando brings us up to pace. The same trick is used in the scherzo, though sadly not in finale, the one movement where it works well, as Vasily Petrenko’s recent recording from Liverpool proved.

The main problem with this reading, though, is the Freiburg Philharmonic. Intonation is dodgy, solos are botched in every movement, and the ensemble is not always playing in unison. The violins can’t keep together in the opening allegro (1:20), and the violin solo in that movement is cringe-worthy (4:24), the brass are out of sync almost permanently in the fourth movement, and the trumpeter lets out a hair-raising yowl at 1:10 in the scherzo. In the finale, the oboist’s solo begins promisingly but ends in screeches, and the violins misplay their way into more unintentional dissonances. Only the principal trombonist (assertive) and bassoonist (extremely cool under pressure) emerge with pride intact.

For live performances, the sound quality is not bad, although coughing pock-marks the Shostakovich slow movements; the sound certainly is clear enough to make the Freiburg Philharmonic’s ample intonation issues evident. A full minute of applause follows each work, and the back cover amusingly gives the copyright date as 2020. (It also, incredibly, misspells “Freiburg.”) I do like the program, with its interesting contrast between romantic splendor and neo-classical sarcasm, and were it better-executed this would be an excellent disc. But the Freiburg Philharmonic poses too great a challenge to the listener. Every time I really started to smile and feel drawn into the music, a solo trumpet or violin would produce such a jarring discord as to make me jump. A pity, really. I’m sure those involved in this release meant well, but some concerts deserve preservation for posterity, and some concerts do not. This one did not.

Brian Reinhart

see also reviews by David Wright and Rob Barnett (two reviews: first, second)

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.