Straight up, I wasn’t expecting a lot from this release. I admire and enjoy recordings by the Academy of Ancient Music and fortepiano specialist Robert Levin – a lot! But this latest release in their long running traversal of all of Mozart’s piano concertos looked (on paper) like an obligatory catch-up volume as they approach the completion of their project together.
These are the slightest and least interesting of the piano concertos Mozart actually composed, leaving aside the trivial childhood exercises named as concertos 1 through 4 in his catalog: those were largely cut-and-paste re-hashes of solo piano pieces by Carl Philip Emanuel Bach and several lesser contemporaries. These later efforts by the 20 year-old Mozart show flashes of the brilliance that was to come, but they are still really just elegant extensions of the C.P.E. Bach model. And so we mostly encounter them as required filler in box sets of the complete concertos.
And yet this album has exceeded my expectations, and I think you will enjoy it too!
This is mostly down to Levin’s decision to play an unusual instrument, the tangent piano, rather than his usual fortepiano. His stated reason for this choice is that there were no fortepianos available in Salzburg, where young Mozart supervised the first performances… and yet the scores call for dynamic variations and effects that could not be performed on the ubiquitous harpsichords of the day. I’m not sure those insights prove that Mozart had a tangent piano in mind. But Levin’s choice absolutely breathes new life into these modest works.
The tangent piano turns out to be a transitional instrument that in effect blends characteristics of harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano. The sound is exotic, with distinctive tonal variations between registers: bright and sparkling in the highs, nasal and twangy (sitar-like at times!) in the mids, and darker in the lower range like some fortepianos. And I get the impression from the way Levin phrases and articulates, that the instrument has a constrained dynamic range.
All of these qualities lead to a radically unusual balance and interplay between soloist and ensemble. At first I thought my ear was simply being tickled into attentiveness by the novelty of the tangent piano’s timbral variations. But it gradually dawned on me that there was more to it. The peculiarities and unevenness of the solo instrument demand a livelier dynamic of give and take with the orchestra. And so we hear the early glimmers of Mozart’s genius for complex and dramatic musical “conversation” in the concerto form, emerging with clarity as never before in these early works. Fascinating!
There’s more to savor in Levin’s playing throughout this set. As usual, he is endlessly creative in ornamenting and shaping what might otherwise come off as conventional and formulaic note-spinning. This is most dramatic in his famously improvisational cadenzas. Other soloists adopt this practice in historically-informed performances of Classical repertoire, but Levin is the leader of the pack, to my taste. His bold harmonic twists and chromatic flourishes are always surprising, yet never outlandish.
I haven’t mentioned the triple concerto K.242 yet. And here, the unexpected choices of solo instrument come to the forefront again. Levin takes his part on the tangent piano again, but Ya-Feng Chuang is on a fortepiano, while Laurence Cummings sticks to harpsichord. Obviously, this is in no way “authentic”, but it is undeniably entertaining. And maybe illuminating. Listen in the excellent surround audio mix here, and you’ll find you can hear each keyboard instrument distinctly, and enjoy how Mozart makes hay with the possibilities of mixing, matching, blending, and contrasting the three soloists.
Speaking of the audio mix, the sonics in this release are quite different compared to other volumes in the larger project. Both the earlier installments engineered by Decca two decades ago, and the recent discs recorded for the ensemble’s own Academy of Ancient Music label, are consistently rich, detailed, and with a pleasing balanced perspective. Here, though, they have gone for a much “wetter” sound, probably by adding reverb to an already spacious acoustic. I imagine this is because the engineer had to mic the tangent piano very closely to bring it into balance with the ensemble, then re-create a cohesive sound stage with added reverb. It’s done nicely enough, but it sounds a bit unnatural… and for some reason, overly bright. It’s easy enough to enjoy this presentation, but it may seem jarring if you listen back-to-back with other volumes in the series.
All in all, this is a thoroughly engaging addition to the excellent ongoing project. Warmly recommended.
Quick Comparisons
- Angela Hewitt, Mozart Piano Concertos 6, 8 & 9 (on Hyperion, 2000): best known as a Bach specialist, Hewitt is no slouch when it comes to Mozart, and this is the finest “straight” modern piano recording you’ll find, the epitome of stylish late 20th-century Mozart.
- Ronald Brautigam with the The Köln Academy on BIS, Mozart Piano Concertos: still arguably the best complete set of the concertos – at least until Levin and the Academy of Ancient Music complete their project and release the box set -beautifully performed on period instruments.
| Where to Buy | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Apple Music | Presto | Qobuz |
| Streaming | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Music | Apple Music | Presto | Qobuz |