Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Carlo Maria Giulini, Rome RAI Orchestra :: Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 23

BUYER BEWARE

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 01/04/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The combination of this recorded sound with Michelangeli makes a high rating impossible. More than anything else, what made Michelangeli unique was his tone-production. Being familiar with his playing, I could just about recognise him through the odd muffled sound of this 1951 live concert with Giulini.



The actual performances were probably quite good. I don't think I was looking for particular illumination of Mozart from Michelangeli as I might look for it from Brendel or Serkin or Curzon or Perahia, but everything he did was interesting. Tempi are very reasonable and nothing struck me as out of style except maybe a few 'expressive' little rhythmic inflexions. One of the critics quoted in the notes that come with these performances in Europe on the Urania label tries to make an issue of the way M handles the opening solo theme in the D minor at a slower speed than the other material, but I can't see much of a problem in that. Richter does something similar and it seems a perfectly reasonable approach to me. Cadenzas are less important, and in the D minor I don't know whose M is using but I'd rather he hadn't. Richter, Serkin and Katchen use Beethoven's.



The problems with the sound are mainly with the piano, but there is a ghastly strangulated sound to the clarinets at the start of the A major. Otherwise I suppose I have heard worse and put up with it better. I didn't get much enlightenment from the European (Urania label) leaflet either, which is largely bombastic Higher Criticism saying not much, and very clumsily translated. In the last resort I was intrigued to find out what this great player might have done in music I don't specially associate him with, and I suppose I have got something of what I was after. I also played versions I have by Serkin, Richter, Solomon and Katchen, so the exercise was enjoyable to that extent. However that is a very limited subset of what is available, and anyone looking for a categorical recommendation will have to do a lot more research. To be going on with, I am pleased to say that Britain is very well represented in the A major stakes by Solomon and Curzon. As regards the D minor, the account by Serkin and Szell strikes me as having something very special about it, whatever the competition, because of the absolute empathy of these boyhood friends, a regal quality to Serkin's playing and his vivid handling of the finale. There is a rough side to Mozart's genius as Shaw very well said, and Serkin is not afraid of that.



So 3 stars on a benefit-of-the-doubt basis because of the intrinsic interest of anything left to us by Michelangeli."

Well, it IS Michelangeli, but is it Mozart?

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 01/03/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Several caveats about this CD. It is in execrable sound, taken from live performances for Italian radio in 1951. I got it primarily because I admire Michelangeli enormously and I also have great admiration for Carlo Maria Giulini as a conductor. Having said that, though, I must admit that except for a few moments I was not terribly taken by the performances. I was intrigued however by ABM's use of completely unknown cadenzas in the D Minor Concerto, K. 466. They clearly aren't the ones Beethoven wrote out of his great admiration for this concerto. And they aren't Hummel's far inferior set, either. So who wrote them? They sound to be much later in style than either Beethoven or Hummel and I would guess, from style alone, that they were written perhaps in the middle third of the 19th century (unless, of course, they are more modern but intentionally written in an old style). Whatever they are, they're rather nice, with some chromaticism that Mozart certainly wouldn't have used, but considering that the D Minor is Mozart's most dramatic, even Romantic, concerto, perhaps that's not too far amiss. As to ABM's playing, I would have to say that he is not a natural Mozart player. Although one can almost hear him gearing back, there is no doubt that he brings a Romantic sensibility to the two concerti. That works better in the D Minor, but in the sunny A Major concerto, K. 488, it really feels wrong. Further, Giulini's accompaniment is full of dramatic gestures that don't fit Mozart's style at all. And the RAI/Rome orchestra sounds scrappy at best; the bass-shy monaural acoustic doesn't help matters.



Still it is interesting to hear how Michelangeli was playing at age 31, just before he became gravely ill and had to interrupt his career for a time (as he had had to do while serving in the Italian air force during WWII). He SOUNDS like Michelangeli, but there is less of a lapidary manner that we became familiar with in his later recordings. There are even a couple of dropped notes, something that almost never happens in live recordings by ABM. Gasp!



I cannot give this CD more than three stars, and do that only because Michelangeli, even when playing in repertoire that is not natural for him, is still a giant. But I suppose this CD would be only for ABM completists, like my esteemed fellow Amazon reviewer, David Bryson, whose knowledge about ABM far exceeds mine. I know he owns these performances, but he seems not to have reviewed them, at least this Classica D'Oro pressing of them.



Scott Morrison"

Michelangeli is good, an obsessive to perfection for any com

Maria S. G. Santos | BRA | 09/12/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Michelangeli takes the music of Mozart with a sound clarity wonderful, impressive, in which the details are emphasized."