Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Alexander Schneider, Eugene Ormandy :: Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 9 & 20

COMPARISONS CAN BE TRICKY

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 03/20/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Both of these performances date from the 1950's, but the remastering has really been very well done and they can be recommended without reservation, unless it counts as a reservation to say that Serkin did another version of the D minor, taking a surprisingly different approach, that I suspect to be the greatest performance ever given of that sublime composition. K271 is the biggest of all Mozart's concertos except for K482, also in E flat, and it is principally famous for bringing the soloist in right at the beginning. It has no clarinets (only K482 and the two concertos immediately following have those) but Mozart's orchestral writing is as heavenly as ever, and despite the early Koechel number it is as thoroughly assured as many of his later works. This performance is more or less ideal so far as I am concerned. Serkin recorded the work again as part of his complete series with Abbado and the LSO when he was around 80 years of age. That series has been usually described as showing him in decline, a view I would call very over-simplified. In his old age he was overcome with distress that he had formerly `played everything too fast', an opinion shared by more or less nobody else, but it is notable just how even his touch remained. Indeed, he had not always seemed unduly bothered about absolute evenness in earlier days just as Horowitz had not, and he retained his control over his fingerwork to the very end in a way Horowitz certainly did not. The late series are consciously and explicitly an old man's readings, and if I ever get to that age myself I shall see how I feel about them then. Meantime, I shall go along with the general view that this K271 is far better. His sharp, alert reply to the orchestra in the second bar sets the scene right away, and the whole performance is full of easy command and authority. The last movement in particular is simply terrific. The performance is from Marlboro with a small orchestra and Schneider, himself of course a chamber musician, conducting. K466 is with Ormandy and the Philadelphia, but the scale of the sound is kept at a reasonable level. This time they take a very dramatic and sinister approach to the first movement, a treatment it responds to very well. Shaw once very well said that there was a rough side to Mozart's genius, and it is a side Serkin is not afraid of. The Romanza slow movement is how it should be in my own view, in particular in not being taken too slowly. The dramatic central section should be forceful but it should not go faster than the outer legs of the movement, and that is how you will find the piece done here, helped in no small measure of course by the soloist's completely special rhythmic instinct. In the finale the repressed near-violence breaks the surface, and I have gone through life finding all other performances under-powered in comparison. It would be a near-automatic first choice for me except that Serkin himself surpassed it. I'm not sure of the year but fairly sure it was later that he and Szell issued a record of the D minor plus K459 in F that seems to me to knock all competition in both works sideways. I'm struggling for the right word to characterise the change in the way the first movement of K466 is done. `Detached' would certainly be wrong, but `aloof' seems somewhere near right to me, provided it does not convey any unintended overtones. It is Augustan, patrician, regal. The frightening quality of the movement is more apparent than ever, but I am acutely conscious that this is the sublime unflustered Mozart, completely above it all as he is in the final scene of Don Giovanni. The effect carries over into the other two movements, not approached in any significantly different way so far as they go on their own. The shadows that underly the Romanza are brought out into relief, and when the smooth surface shatters in the last movement it is more startling than ever for not having been anticipated. That is the K466 I have lived with all my life. No disparagement whatsoever is intended of Richter or Katchen when I say that they seem just a little ordinary by this comparison, and while the last thing Michelangeli could be called is ordinary by any standard he is not in the last analysis my idea of a natural Mozart stylist. My new Serkin version does not supplant that tremendous reading but it is not really competing on the same terms. It is a different view, and for all I know it could be nearer to your own concept of the work."

Finally available on CD

Michael Simpson | Austin, TX USA | 07/09/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Marlboro Festival Orchestra that accompanies Rudolf Serkin in this recording of Mozart's Concerto No. 9 is not perfectly in tune, and the French horns sometimes blast away the other winds and strings. I don't care; this is the recording of the 9th to have. One of the most underrated of Mozart's masterpieces, the 9th starts with the piano right off the bat; instead of the dual expositions one is accustomed to with classical concerti, the soloist enters almost immediately, in the second measure. Serkin lends musicality to a concerto that is deceptively difficult; hear his voicing of the third movement, which challenges most pianists merely to play all the notes correctly. I am reminded of Tureck performing the Well-Tempered Clavier, or Ashekenazy's stunning execution of Chopin's Opus 10 etudes.



I'm not as familiar with the 20th concerto, though I have heard it several times. I have listened to this performance twice and can recommend it as well. This time, Serkin is accompanied by his favorite orchestra -- the Philadelphia -- with Eugene Ormandy at the podium. The soloist and orchestra both perform with style and precision. Finally, the remastering of these two historical recordings has resulted in a classic CD that will enhance any collection."