I’ve been absorbing individual concertos from this set
for some time - longer than I ought, in fact, since I should
have tied up this review long ago - without being able to sum
up my attitude succinctly. Then I saw the performances described
somewhere as unfailingly reliable and that’s just right.
If you infer from that they’re also not the last word,
you would be correct.
The distinguished veteran pianist Rudolf Buchbinder (b. 1946)
made his debut at the tender age of 10 with a performance of
Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, in the Vienna Muikverein,
no less. He has several distinguished Beethoven recordings to
his credit, including a complete set of the Piano Sonatas entitled
Beethoven: The Sonata Legacy (RCA 88697875102, 9 CDs,
for about £38). Some individual recordings also survive
from the set of the sonatas which he made for Teldec in the
1980s. On a smaller scale there is a 2-CD set of the cello sonatas,
with János Starker and a single disc of the complete
bagatelles, both on the budget-price Warner Apex label.
He has also recorded some of the Mozart Concertos for Profil
(no longer available?) and on DVD for Euroarts - review
- review
and review,
but I didn’t think that he had made commercial recordings
of the Beethoven Piano Concertos.
I was wrong: in fact he has recorded Concertos Nos. 3 and 4
for CD Accord (ACD156-2 - see review),
a live recording from the 2002 Beethoven Easter Festival, which
continues to be available for £13.50, post free, direct
from Musicweb International - here.
Subscribers to the invaluable Naxos Music Library can check
it out there. Even more surprisingly, there’s a complete
recording 3-CD of the concertos on the Preiser label, with the
Vienna Symphony Orchestra, which I haven’t been able to
access. The Vienna Philharmonic are a more distinguished orchestra
than their VSO neighbours.
As this new blu-ray and DVD set is offered as a take-or-leave
package of all five concertos, there’s little point in
comparing Buchbinder’s performances with those of individual
or paired concertos. In any case, there are more complete recordings
than you can shake a stick at, both on CD and DVD, Ashkenazy
(Decca), Perahia (Medici) and Barenboim (Euroarts) chief among
the latter. It’s the most recent CD recordings, not only
of the five regular concertos but also of Beethoven’s
own rearrangement of the Violin Concerto, the Triple Concerto
and shorter works that I shall be using as my benchmark. Of
this recording from Howard Shelley and the Orchestra of Opera
North (Chandos CHAN10695, 4CDs) I recently wrote in my
November
2011/2 Download Roundup:
If I say that Shelley and his team offer very good performances,
with nothing that made me want to scratch away like Beckmesser
at my critical slate, but that they didn’t bring any revelations
in the ‘regular’ concertos, I don’t mean that
as a criticism, rather as a statement of the extent to which
all concerned seem to be at one with a composer who is often
harder to gel with than we like to think. In fact, there were
several passages where I noticed some aspects of the solo or
orchestral writing that I hadn’t noticed before, even
in Concerto No.1.
For most listeners, Shelley’s Beethoven-as-is approach,
with clarity the hallmark, will be a positive virtue, though
that doesn’t mean that there’s any lack of power,
particularly in the Emperor. No one set can ever be definitive,
especially with the likes of Schoonderwoerd’s revelatory
chamber-size recordings on Alpha … to supplement the more
conventional.
I’m always pleased to see others agreeing, as Dominy Clements
did in his more detailed review of this set, which he made Recording
of the Month - here.
Meanwhile I’d already regretted my decision not to make
Shelley’s recordings my Download of the Month - in self-defence
I must add that there were at least three prime candidates that
month - and atoned by including it in my six Recordings of
the Year.
In many ways Buchbinder, like Shelley, offers the concertos
without imposing himself on the music; the difference is that
his enjoyment is both visually apparent and evident in his performances,
even when playing the solo part and directing the orchestra
is at its most hectic. The booklet refers to the ‘meticulous
detail’ of Buchbinder’s preparation of the scores
in order to achieve Beethoven’s intentions and there are
times when it’s clear that he’s thinking carefully,
but his face frequently lights up after moments when he’s
been in deep concentration.
Despite all the rude and intemperate things that he said about
Haydn, Beethoven’s first two piano concertos clearly echo
the music of Haydn and Mozart and neither Buchbinder nor Shelley
tries to force these concertos into something bigger than they
are. They both show clearly the transitional nature of Nos.
3 and 4 in performances that confirm my own ability to listen
to these works more often than the more intense Emperor.
I promised not to make comparisons with recordings of individual
concertos, but it’s interesting to see how Buchbinder’s
tempi have broadened slightly since his earlier recording with
the Sinfonietta Cracovia. I’ve thrown in Shelley’s
timings, too, for comparison.
|
|
Sinfonia Cracovia |
Vienna Philharmonic |
Shelley |
|
No.3/i |
16:28 |
17:16 |
16:30 |
|
No.3/ii |
8:40 |
9:07 |
9:24 |
|
No.3/iii |
8:42 |
8:49 |
8:56 |
|
No.4/i |
18:40 |
19:21 |
18:36 |
|
No.4/ii |
4:47 |
4:51 |
4:58 |
|
No.4/iii |
9:54 |
9:59 |
9:33 |
|
No.5/i |
|
20:14 |
19:42 |
|
No.5/ii |
|
7:05 |
7:37 |
|
No.5/iii |
|
9:44 |
10:11 |
In fact it’s Buchbinder’s refusal to force the pace
in the outer movements of No. 4 and the opening movement of
No. 5 that constitutes one of the chief virtues of this new
set. In those outer movements of the fourth he adopts noticeably
broader tempi than Shelley, though they are in close agreement
in the second movement. If push came to shove, however, I’d
turn to Shelley rather than to Buchbinder - in the final analysis,
he’s more successful in playing the solo and simultaneously
keeping control of the orchestra, but he didn’t have the
more difficult task of doing so in live performance.
If allowed two recordings for my desert island, I’d take
Shelley and the older Stephen Kovacevich/Colin Davis set, formerly
Philips and due for reissue in June 2012, with the Violin Concerto
(Herman Krebbers), Romances (Arthur Grumiaux) and Triple Concerto
(Claudio Arrau, Henryk Szeryng and Janos Starker) on Australian
Eloquence 480 5946 - excellent value on 4 CDs: guide price around
£18. Nos. 2 and 4 have also been refurbished and released
on SACD by PentaTone, PTC5186101.
The Viennese audience are either much quieter than their Polish
counterparts or the engineers have been more successful in keeping
out any intrusions. More to the point, the Vienna Phil are a
much smoother and more accomplished body of players than the
Sinfonia Cracovia and it may be partly for this reason that
Buchbinder felt free to relax his tempi slightly.
The recording is as much at one with the music as the performances
and the picture on blu-ray is superb, with none of the shimmer
from the Golden Hall that Austrian television seem unable to
avoid in their otherwise excellent broadcasts of the New Year’s
Concerts.
The booklet is superior to most of those which accompany DVD
and blu-ray recordings. On sale in the UK for around £23,
this is also one of the least expensive ways to obtain the complete
Beethoven piano concertos, even if you intend to listen and
not watch: played via my Cambridge Audio blu-ray player and
audio system, the sound is easily up to SACD quality.
Brian Wilson
see also review by Geoffrey
Molyneux
Buchbinder's enjoyment is both visually apparent and evident
in his performances.
Rudolf Buchbinder (piano and conductor); Wiener Philharmoniker 
[186:00 + 29:00 bonus: Buchbinder’s Beethoven, a musical conversation]
