Barenboim Mozart Piano Concertos

Involving, as it does, three master musicians and a fine chamber orchestra this was never likely to be be other than rewarding. It may not correspond with the ways of playing Mozart at the beginning of the twenty-first century which are fashionable at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but it has virtues – such as high intelligence, sympathy, certainty of purpose, grace, alertness of interplay – which transcend questions of performance practice. Looking at the names of the pianists above, we might be surprised by the presence of Sir Georg Solti, so used are we to thinking of him as a conductor. But the young Solti appeared in public as a pianist from the age of twelve and went on to study piano in Budapest, with Dohnányi and Bartok.

This exceptional production, shot in 1988/1989 on 35 mm film and directed by George Moorse, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Klaas Rusticus, has been digitally remastered with the greatest care for high-quality audio and video restoration. The music of Mozart has been an essential driving force of Daniel Barenboim’s entire life. It remains central to his performing career both as a pianist and as a conductor. These illuminating performances of Mozart’s last eight great piano concertos admirably demonstrate Barenboim’s dictum that even when a true musician has already performed a familiar work hundreds of times, he or she ‘never accepts that the next note will be played the same way as it was played before’.

This exceptional production, shot in 1988/1989 on 35 mm film and directed by George Moorse, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Klaas Rusticus, has been digitally remastered with the greatest care for high-quality audio and video restoration. The music of Mozart has been an essential driving force of Daniel Barenboim’s entire life. It remains central to his performing career both as a pianist and as a conductor. These illuminating performances of Mozart’s last eight great piano concertos admirably demonstrate Barenboim’s dictum that even when a true musician has already performed a familiar work hundreds of times, he or she ‘never accepts that the next note will be played the same way as it was played before’.

This is all-around a great recording. I want to principally address the C major concerto (#13 K. 415), as it is light years beyond the early 6th, and warrants a bit more consideration. Before purchasing this record, I had previously only heard the C major once, and I can't even remember the soloist or orchestra (maybe Barenboim); consequently, I was a bit hesitant to go ahead and buy it. However, it has surely become one of my favorite Mozart piano concertos. This is in no small part due to the extraordinary first movement, which, barring the last of the 19th and the 1st of the 20th, would certainly be my favorite in any of the Mozart piano concerti.

We are accustomed to looking to Pearl for gems from the past, and these transfers from previously unpublished live recordings of the 70-year-old Horszowski's Mozart, complete with crackles, muffed notes and coughing fits aplenty, do indeed sound as if they come from the dark backward and abysm of time. They date, in fact, only from 1962-72: near contemporaries of Barenboim's Mozart concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra. These performances, though, were taken from radio tapes and from a disc-cutting machine fed directly by the microphones in the Metropolitan Museum of Art where this concert series was held. They are alive with all the spontaneous enthusiasm of music-making which involved no record companies, no editing and no public relations.

Even though Vladimir Ashkenazy is most often celebrated for his brilliantly virtuosic interpretations of Romantic repertoire, his skills in playing works of the Classical era are just as worthy, as proved by this 10-disc set from London of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano concertos. These performances span a period from 1966 to 1988, capturing a youthful and vigorous Ashkenazy playing and conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra from the keyboard, in approved Mozartian fashion. All of the keyboard concertos are here, including the official 27 concertos for piano and orchestra, the Concerto for two pianos in E flat major, K. 365, the Concerto for three pianos in F major, K. 242, as well as the two Rondos K. 382 and K. 386. Ashkenazy's elegant playing has been highly praised by critics and placed on a level with his esteemed contemporaries Murray Perahia, Daniel Barenboim, and Alfred Brendel, all past masters of Mozart's primary medium of expression.