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

The Chopin Piano Concertos
Josef HAYDN (1732-1809)
Symphony no.44 in E minor, Hob. 1:44 Mourning (1772) [22:32]
Frédéric CHOPIN (1810-1849)
Piano concerto no.2 in F minor, op.21 (1830) [34:29]
Piano concerto no.1 in E minor, op.11 (1830) [43:35]
Valse brillante in A minor, op.34/2 (1831) [6:27]
Daniel Barenboim (piano)
Staatskapelle Berlin/Andris Nelsons
rec. Philharmonie Essen, Ruhr Piano Festival 2010
PCM stereo DD 5.1; picture format 16:9; region code 0; DVD9 NTSC
ARTHAUS MUSIK DVD 101 577 [110:00]

Experience Classicsonline

 
My colleague Michael Cookson gave an entirely justified warm welcome to Deutsche Grammophon's stand-alone release of the two Chopin concertos, extracted from this 2010 Ruhr Piano Festival concert.
 
On this newly released DVD, however, the addition of a Haydn Sturm und Drang symphony and a Chopin solo encore restores the original full programme, even though - no doubt for marketing purposes – the release is entitled simply The Chopin Piano Concertos.
 
I have yet to attend a concert where conductor Andris Nelsons leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. It’s an orchestra he has headed since 2008. On the evidence we have here – which allows us to share the orchestra’s viewpoint rather than the audience’s - he is an especially animated and lively occupant of the podium, favouring big, sweeping gestures and communicating to great effect with his players via a wonderfully wide and striking range of facial expressions - I counted at least half a dozen varieties of toothy grin, alone!
 
The performance of the Haydn symphony - the so-called Trauer (“Mourning”) - is beautifully conceived and executed. The Staatskapelle Berlin is expertly balanced and Nelsons's control of dynamics is also finely crafted. What looks on paper to be a somewhat eccentric piece of programming emerges in fact as a triumph, showcasing the orchestra’s delicacy and finesse in a way that the more densely orchestrated Chopin concertos do not, in general, allow.
 
The spotlight for the rest of the disc falls largely on the soloist Daniel Barenboim, a very regular participant in the Ruhr Piano Festival over the years (see here). While I am not sure that I would echo Michael Cookson in his provocative proposition that "I cannot think of a greater name in the music world today than Daniel Barenboim” (Claudio Abbado?) - and while many today would regard him primarily as a conductor rather than a pianist – it is without doubt a privilege to hear his interpretations of these concertos.
 
Given that the second concerto was actually written before the so-called first, the order of performance here is easily justified. In both works, Barenboim favours a bold, leonine approach. He can certainly play with appropriate delicacy when required, but his is an incisive rather than an especially poetic approach. The occasional moments of exception to that generalisation – such as the brief, dream-like passage for solo piano towards the end of the first concerto’s slow movement – are the more notable for being so few and far between.
 
In appraising the quality of the concerto performances, I would merely echo Michael Cookson’s verdict, so let me instead concentrate on what is to be gained by being able to see – as well as to hear – the concert. The Philharmonie Essen is a splendid modern and spacious concert hall, although I was surprised to see how many seats remained vacant for this occasion: we hear that Germany is weathering the European economic crisis quite well, but maybe some potential concert-goers chose to hoard their Euros instead; the people who are in the audience, on the other hand, look rather well-heeled.
 
Video director Enrique Sánchez Lansch has clearly mastered the score, so he knows exactly where to position his cameramen to best effect, and he and his editor have created a compelling visual record of what the ecstatic audience clearly regarded as a thrilling musical evening. Barenboim is not, in the concertos, a facially expressive musician. He prefers, rather, to adopt a rather intense persona while keeping his head down to the keyboard, so instead we have lots of shots of his fingers - surprisingly short and stubby - in expert action.
 
The sound on the DVD is clear and true, though - to my ears at least - it seems to favour the piano over the orchestra, especially in the second concerto; were the microphones adjusted during the interval?
 
As always with this sort of release, I wonder just how often it will actually be watched. If you are like me, you will often have a CD playing in the background while you wander around the house. Watching music on TV needs far more attention, however, and in most cases will also produce inferior quality sound. Thus, while this is certainly a worthwhile record of a fine evening in the concert hall and will no doubt be snapped up by those who were actually in the audience and by Barenboim’s many admirers, others might do better by buying the CD release that was recently so warmly welcomed by Michael Cookson.
 
Rob Maynard
 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 


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.