Mozart Piano Concertos

[Scion7]

I set out when I was a wee high school student to buy the late piano concerti by Wolfgang.
However, while in Charlotte I spied this set for $27 (I think?) and just went with that:



My set was on Angel, not EMI, however - same cover - and the pressings on this particular set of Angel LP's
sounded like they had been made by Estonian trafficed girls in an Albanian sweatshop.  Just horrible.  I kept
trying to live with them, but eventually had to ditch it.  So I sold it off, and went about finding something better.

So I got the following vinyl and CD's over the years, and am content:





^That Angel pressing is relatively good.  No one would ever confuse it with DG or Philips, of course.

And I have mp3's ripped from a couple of friends' sets by Bilson/Gardiner/English Baroque Soloists and Pollini/Vienna Philharmonic -
after I got my CDCDCD under control.  I'm reformed !!!!!!!!!   

[Mandryka]

I'll just mention a few recent discoveries in this music. All of these are things I've gotten to know over the past twelve months. How long I'll stay enamoured by them I can't say. I'm confident they are all well worth a listen.

(Michelangeli/Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti)

The PC13 is wonderful -- a good contrast to the one with  Garben  and better in terms of sound than the one with Giulini.

Talking of ABM I wonder what people think of this PC20 (for me it's spoiled  by Munchinger -- sonically it's much better than the one with Giulini)




(Gilels/Moscow Conservatoire Orchestra)

The PC 27 is amazing, and infinitely preferable to the one with Boehm. He conducted it himself.

(Zacharias/Zinman)

The PC 23 here  is incandescent. My top 23.

Talking of Zacherias, how are people getting on with the recoridings with the Lucerne Orchestra? I have them but I've hardly started to explore them in depth. I did listen carefully to 21 -- for me it was a bit one-dimensionally sunny. Where has the bold post-modernist Zacharias gone? -- the chap who introduced the synthesizer so approriately in PC 26, or distressed the Don Giovanni chord so wonderfully in PC 20. Oh dear, he's matured.



Someone here put me on to this a while ago. It really is an essential recording. Recently the PC 17 has been giving me enormous pleasure.

(Kocsis/Budapest Festival Orchestra)

Another good 17 here -- and the 19, which is an interesting thing to compare with Schnabel and Pollini

Kocsis's 25 with Rolla was good too. Has anyone heard his 27 here?

(Kocsis/Rolla/Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra)

[Clever Hans]

I'll just mention a few recent discoveries in this music. All of these are things I've gotten to know over the past twelve months. How long I'll stay enamoured by them I can't say. I'm confident they are all well worth a listen.

I think you've finally gone off the deep end with the personalized Mozart. The sound quality of that Gilels cd is hellish. But more power to you.

Zacharias just came out with a new 491, his EMI recording being a highlight. He was always good in andante of 467, and that volume (6) is solid. I actually think his playing style on the Lucerne cds I've heard is somewhat more concise, perhaps partly because he's deciding himself on the flow of the music. Although you have the trade off from the bigger orchestra sound. Sure he's a little over-polished, but he's reliable, direct, and unlike so many players he's expressively tasteful. Also technically fluid, which is very important to me for a convincing Mozart interpreter. 

[Bulldog]

I think you've finally gone off the deep end with the personalized Mozart. The sound quality of that Gilels cd is hellish. But more power to you.

Zacharias just came out with a new 491, his EMI recording being a highlight. He was always good in andante of 467, and that volume (6) is solid. I actually think his playing style on the Lucerne cds I've heard is somewhat more concise, perhaps partly because he's deciding himself on the flow of the music. Although you have the trade off from the bigger orchestra sound. Sure he's a little over-polished, but he's reliable, direct, and unlike so many players he's expressively tasteful. Also technically fluid, which is very important to me for a convincing Mozart interpreter.

You're so right.  I think that fluid playing is more important in Mozart's piano works than any other composer I know.  Those pianists who chop up Mozart's music really suck.

[Clever Hans]

You're so right.  I think that fluid playing is more important in Mozart's piano works than any other composer I know.  Those pianists who chop up Mozart's music really suck.

For me, I just can't get past the idea of the exuberant and freely creative youth.
With other composers, like Bach and Beethoven, who actually grew old, that is not the case.
But with Mozart, if you lose that exuberance and fluid output, it's no longer Mozart, in my opinion.

[Mandryka]

I think you've finally gone off the deep end with the personalized Mozart. The sound quality of that Gilels cd is hellish. But more power to you.

Zacharias just came out with a new 491, his EMI recording being a highlight. He was always good in andante of 467, and that volume (6) is solid. I actually think his playing style on the Lucerne cds I've heard is somewhat more concise, perhaps partly because he's deciding himself on the flow of the music. Although you have the trade off from the bigger orchestra sound. Sure he's a little over-polished, but he's reliable, direct, and unlike so many players he's expressively tasteful. Also technically fluid, which is very important to me for a convincing Mozart interpreter.

I agree he's expressively tasteful in the EMI set, especially when he puts the synthesizer in PC 26, and when he deforms that chord in  the last movement of PC 20, and when he takes that unusually rapid tempo for the slow movement of PC 21. I haven't explored all of the Lausanne recordings but as I say I thought the PC 21 was shallow in conception, really because he seems to see the concerto as unrelentingly happy music. The really interesting PC 21s find a greater variety of feeling in the music. Gilels is the most revealing for me in this concerto.

I did play his PC 19 with the Lausanne a couple of times this week in fact, and again I was underwhelmed for similar reasons. The PC 23 from memory didn't have the same white hot quality as the record he made with Zinman.

By the way I think you're exaggerating about the sound in the Gilels PC 27 from Moscow, though I  I may have a high level of tolerance  when it comes to sound quality. Do you think that the Gilels performance there is particularly personalised?  I wonder what you think of the way Schnabel plays it -- the tempos in the largo. Is Kocsics personalsed? And Richter?

[Mandryka]

For me, I just can't get past the idea of the exuberant and freely creative youth.
With other composers, like Bach and Beethoven, who actually grew old, that is not the case.
But with Mozart, if you lose that exuberance and fluid output, it's no longer Mozart, in my opinion.

I think there are some lovely pieces by Mozart which go beyond this paradigm of exuberant lyricism, or at least can be well served by performances which go beyond it.

I wonder what you think of (Vladimir) Sofronitsky's. Moscow Conservatory performance of K396. 

[Clever Hans]

I agree he's expressively tasteful in the EMI set, especially when he puts the synthesizer in PC 26, and when he deforms that chord in  the last movement of PC 20, and when he takes that unusually rapid tempo for the slow movement of PC 21. I haven't explored all of the Lausanne recordings but as I say I thought the PC 21 was shallow in conception, really because he seems to see the concerto as unrelentingly happy music. The really interesting PC 21s find a greater variety of feeling in the music. Gilels is the most revealing for me in this concerto.

I did play his PC 19 with the Lausanne a couple of times this week in fact, and again I was underwhelmed for similar reasons. The PC 23 from memory didn't have the same white hot quality as the record he made with Zinman.

By the way I think you're exaggerating about the sound in the Gilels PC 27 from Moscow, though I  I may have a high level of tolerance  when it comes to sound quality. Do you think that the Gilels performance there is particularly personalised?  I wonder what you think of the way Schnabel plays it -- the tempos in the largo. Is Kocsics personalsed? And Richter?

Sorry, by personalized, I meant your personal selections, not especially personalized playing.

About Zacharias on EMI, I draw a distinction between the overall playing style and a couple contentious solutions to Mozart's incomplete piano parts, cadenzas and so forth. In the former area, Zacharias is much more tasteful than a host of sentimental Mozart performers. His ornamentation in the latter area is likewise very tasteful.

The cadenzas are problematic. But the majority of the EMI performances (basically all except 2), 491 and 488 in particular, show that he is a fluid player capable of reference interpretations.

The synthesizer in the cadenza of 537 is supposed to stand in for a music box. It doesn't sound like a Prophet or Moog. The result may not be entirely successful, but I don't find the decision to be lacking in taste, just experimental, certainly not more so than Edwin Fischer's cadenzas, for example. The chord in 466, are you talking about the Don Giovanni sample, that's clearly supposed to sound like an old mono Salzburg tutto, e.g. Furtwangler, before the Don gets dragged to hell? My response to that is the same, though the Lucerne version is more conventional and streamlined no doubt.

As for the "unusually rapid tempo" in 467. Contrary to tradition, it's not a slow movement. It's andante, alla breve. His tempo is actually in the correct range. I'm surprised you don't know this.

So, we have only 2 potential misfires in an otherwise solid set. And considering that 466 is played to death and 537 is not one of Mozart's best anyway, this result is fine with me.

About the Gilels performance. Gilels is one of my favorites, and I have many live recordings by him. But that Mozart concerto recording has no depth to the orchestral sound and the tone is completely thin and wavering. Maybe if Vista Vera hadn't gotten their hands on it... it would be marginally better, but it's a cheap tape recording. It's an interesting document, obviously, and to like it more than the studio version is one thing, but to say it is "infinitely preferable" to the Bohm, which has an order of magnitude better quality orchestral playing and sound, strikes me as silly.

In those Richter performances, the coarse orchestral sound is slightly better, but unlike Gilels' his playing is sometimes heavy-handed, e.g. 482 iii and 450 iii. They are interesting in their way.

Finally, those Michelangeli performances, well, the orchestral sound is pretty squeaky, but his playing is phenomenal. He's better than Richter, that's for sure.

I think there are some lovely pieces by Mozart which go beyond this paradigm of exuberant lyricism, or at least can be well served by performances which go beyond it.

I wonder what you think of (Vladimir) Sofronitsky's. Moscow Conservatory performance of K396. 

I never said "lyricism." In any case, all Mozart works better without sentimentality and ponderousness, with youthful energy, dramatic flexibility and fluidity, which is why Harnoncourt's rather dark recordings with the RCO are so good.

The Sofronitsky performance is unusual. Sounds a little like Chopin, which is insightful.
But I also think Edwin Fischer's voice leading is more sophisticated.

[Mandryka]

I didn't mean it to be irony about Zacharias's synth. I also didn't know it was supposed to be a music box! I like that sort of experimentation a lot. I also know that the tempo he tkes the central movement in PC 21 is very justifiable -- but as far as I can remember no one else takes it so rapidly.

Vista Vera transfers are problematic, I know. But in that case it doesn't prevent me appreciating the performance (which I played again last night and enjoyed a lot)

It's the Richter/Barshai PC 17 which interests me the most in that box in fact, though I've enjoyed the 15 and 22. The style is not light, but I think that's a good thing. Heavy handed is loaded.

Let me ask you an off-topic question here, since you have listened to a lot of Mozart  (someone will move it if it's a problem). Any recommendations for the C minor mass? I have and like Leppard's CD, but I'm wondering what else good is around.

[Clever Hans]

I didn't mean it to be irony about Zacharias's synth. I also didn't know it was supposed to be a music box! I like that sort of experimentation a lot. I also know that the tempo he tkes the central movement in PC 21 is very justifiable -- but as far as I can remember no one else takes it so rapidly.

Vista Vera transfers are problematic, I know. But in that case it doesn't prevent me appreciating the performance (which I played again last night and enjoyed a lot)

It's the Richter/Barshai PC 17 which interests me the most in that box in fact, though I've enjoyed the 15 and 22. The style is not light, but I think that's a good thing. Heavy handed is loaded.

Let me ask you an off-topic question here, since you have listened to a lot of Mozart  (someone will move it if it's a problem). Any recommendations for the C minor mass? I have and like Leppard's CD, but I'm wondering what else good is around.

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were being sarcastic.

I'm similarly inclined to think Richter's 17 is the best in that set.

And really what I was getting at about the Gilels is that sometimes we may favor the live recordings, and this one is very interesting, yes, but that the studio recording has other major advantages.
Then again, I would love to see more Leonhardt and Pollini bootlegs, for example.

For C minor mass, there seem to be quite a lot of good recordings, although people will be partisan.  I think I would choose Bernstein, Harnoncourt, Leppard and Fricsay. Maybe Herreweghe for a small church version. I don't like Gardiner's conducting, I've decided.

[Leo K.]

This morning I'm really enjoying Curzon's performance of concerto's #23 and #27, dating from 1964 with the Wiener Philharmoniker under George Szell.

Amazing, amazing playing.

[Leo K.]

Piano Concerti 20 & 25 With Michelangeli (piano) and Garben conducting


Another exquisite recording. I'm rather new to Michelangeli.

[Leo K.]

Marriner is one of my favorite Mozart conductors. That is probably the case because of the "Amadeus" soundtrack (my initial intro to Mozart in the 80s) but over the years I've come to love his subtle workmanship in the accompaniments to the piano concertos. And Ivan Moravec, also on the "Amadeus" soundtrack, rings a bell in my subconcious when it comes to Mozart, so I'm not surprised I'm really enjoying the above recording.

[Leon]

Marriner is one of my favorite Mozart conductors. That is probably the case because of the "Amadeus" soundtrack (my initial intro to Mozart in the 80s) but over the years I've come to love his subtle workmanship in the accompaniments to the piano concertos. And Ivan Moravec, also on the "Amadeus" soundtrack, rings a bell in my subconcious when it comes to Mozart, so I'm not surprised I'm really enjoying the above recording.

I have this one and two others - both enjoyable.  I recently went ahead and got the Malcolm Bilson/Gardiner set - which I have had wish-listed for a while.  I also got the complete Uchida set, since I have always enjoyed her Mozart playing.  I now have five (?) complete sets and a bunch of individual recordings of these works.  They are my favorite Mozart, and a form I think he excelled at.  The interesting thing is listening to Bilson and Uchida back to back.  Anda, Perahia, and Immerseel make up my other sets.  I'm not in front of my collection, so I may be leaving someone out.   

As I often say, I prefer period instruments - but for the Mozart PC, I love hearing the lushness of a modern piano with the orchestra, too.  Oh, I also have Michangeli on 13 & 15; I like the playing but the sound seems "boxy" - maybe because it is from a live performance.  John O'Conor, Robert Levin, Maria Joao Pires, Robert Casadesus and Ingrid Haebler also play these works very nicely.

[Leo K.]

I have this one and two others - both enjoyable.  I recently went ahead and got the Malcolm Bilson/Gardiner set - which I have had wish-listed for a while.  I also got the complete Uchida set, since I have always enjoyed her Mozart playing.  I now have five (?) complete sets and a bunch of individual recordings of these works.  They are my favorite Mozart, and a form I think he excelled at.  The interesting thing is listening to Bilson and Uchida back to back.  Anda, Perahia, and Immerseel make up my other sets.  I'm not in front of my collection, so I may be leaving someone out.   

As I often say, I prefer period instruments - but for the Mozart PC, I love hearing the lushness of a modern piano with the orchestra, too.  Oh, I also have Michangeli on 13 & 15; I like the playing but the sound seems "boxy" - maybe because it is from a live performance.  John O'Conor, Robert Levin, Maria Joao Pires, Robert Casadesus and Ingrid Haebler also play these works very nicely.

The Kraus (Vienna State Orchestra with Simon), Bilson and Immersel sets are my mainstays, but recently, my re-attraction to the modern grand has totally captured my imagination. You are right, Mozart's concerti are incredible on the modern grand.

I am exploring many recordings that I usually would have ignored in the past. Curzon, Serkin, Casadesus, and Haebler are on my listening pile! Can't wait to hear and compare these!

I have the Uchida on my wish-list, as I've always loved her recording of Mozart's 18th and 19th with Tate at the helm. Would love to hear more of that cycle.

[Leo K.]

By the way, the Lili Kraus/Stephen Simon LP cycle is one of my most treasured recordings, it was my introduction to Mozart's piano concerti back in the day:

[George]

By the way, the Lili Kraus/Stephen Simon LP cycle is one of my most treasured recordings, it was my introduction to Mozart's piano concerti back in the day:

If you ever transfer those to digital, please let me know? I love Lili's Mozart.

[Scion7]

Lili settled in Asheville, NC for many years until she passed.
Some friends and I went by where we were told she used to live in the 90's.

This is another great artist that unfortunately was not recorded in the best conditions.
Wish recording techniques of the 40's-50's had been equal to, say, late-70's.  Sigh.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxseZKegE5U

[mjwal]

I only know Lili's K.414 & 456 with Monteux and the BSO - very fine. Otherwise I'm a Schnabel, Fischer (K.503 live! only issued by Diapason I think), Casadesus, Serkin & Curzon devotee. I also appreciate the Richter recordings of K.595 & 451(?) that Mandryka approves of but have never heard the K.453 he raves about. In the latter I can recommend a Gulda performance, with Angerer; Kempe conducts K.595 on the other side of the LP: live if I remember aright, a glorious performance - never reissued, priceless (it's somewhere else so I can't get it out now).

[George]

Anyone own this? If so, please PM me?