My feeling on listening to Matthias Kirschnereit is that he doesn't offer anything that earlier soloists haven't given us already, and rather less than the best of them. I listened to K.488 three times just to make sure, but I only had to play my old recording of Clifford Curzon (Decca 444 469-2) for a few minutes to know that it was in an altogether higher class. I also remembered Clara Haskil as having produced a supremely fine version.
These things are difficult to demonstrate, and impossible to prove. But for me these new Mozart piano concerto recordings may sell well during this anniversary year, but they're not going to join the select company of golden renderings already in the catalogues.
The attraction of Nikolaj Znaider's new recordings of the well-known violin concertos of Mendelssohn and Beethoven is their tasteful understatement. Beethoven's work in particular often receives declamatory, insistent treatment, flawed by attempts at over-kill. Here, however, you have Znaider and the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta coming up with a rendering that is almost as sweet and gentle as Mendelssohn's lyrical concerto is always, rightly, seen as being. This is most welcome, and it is comes as no surprise to learn that when Beethoven's concerto finally found fame, long after the composer's death, it was with none other than Felix Mendelssohn conducting.
Even where Beethoven virtually demands dynamism and bravura energy from his soloist, the effect on this recording remains relatively intimate by virtue of the laid-back nature of Mehta's orchestral accompaniment. How diffe-rent from the hectoring and messianic insistence of some older maestros for whom Beethoven was simultaneously both a god and his premier musical prophet, and very much in the roistering Old Testament tradition at that. This, in other words, is a fine version that appeals by not making too many claims for itself and ends up being quite possibly a first choice for those who like their Beethoven more akin to Mozart than to Wagner.
RSS