Ludwig van Beethoven; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Concertos (Yevgeny Sudbin)

Information

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K 491
• Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37

Yevgeny Sudbin, piano

Minnesota Orchestra

Osmo Vänskä, conductor

Date: 2013

Label: BIS

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Review

Even if the catalogue was in a less parlous state than it currently is where recordings of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto are concerned, this newest addition to Yevgeny Sudbin’s Beethoven cycle with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra would be a thing to wonder at.

Bryce Morrison has written of ‘the mother-of-pearl sheen’ of Sudbin’s pianism. In none of the five concertos is fineness of touch more a sine qua non than in the fantasy-strewn and yet oddly elusive Third Concerto. Solomon has this quality in his still fresh-sounding 1956 HMV recording, as did Gilels, whose technical and imaginative mastery of the work Sudbin to some extent shares. Gilels was reliably partnered in the studio by Cluytens (11/54 – nla) and Szell (12/70 – nla). Neither collaboration, however, was on a par with what we have here from Vänskä and his Minnesota players, where the marriage of strength in exposition and sensitivity in accompaniment is more or less beyond compare.

The shaping of the concerto is well-nigh ideal. The first movement has pace and presence, out of which larger vistas naturally emerge; the great slow movement is rapt without in any sense being static; the finale is wonderfully crisp and gamesome. As befits the performance’s general sense of focus and discipline, Beethoven’s own cadenzas are used. The recorded quality is exceptional.

Would all was as well with the performance of Mozart’s C minor Concerto, a work which Beethoven himself greatly revered. Vänskä takes what in context is a suitably Beethovenish view of the music but overall there is little real meeting of minds here. In the first movement Vänskä drives and (given half a chance) Sudbin dreams – until, that is, Sudbin lets fly with a tempestuous cadenza of his own devising. This is as structurally and stylistically at odds with Mozart’s long and richly worked first movement as the cadenzas deployed by Curzon (a nicely judged essay by Marius Flothuis), Kempff, and the contrapuntally minded Brendel are not. In much the same way, the ornamentation which Sudbin chooses to add to the simple-seeming Larghetto is curiously banal; after which he gives a decidedly unburdened account of the predominantly minor-key finale. Here it is not the refinement of the playing which is in question. What is lacking is concentration of effect during Mozart’s emotionally charged traversal of the eight variations and coda.

To half-quote Dickens, this is the best of discs and the worst of discs, wisdom in Beethoven and in Mozart folly. But, rest assured, the Beethoven is not to be missed.

— Richard Osborne

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Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. Beethoven is acknowledged as a giant of classical music, and his influence on subsequent generations was profound. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets. Many of his most admired works come from the last decade of his life, when he was almost completely deaf.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was an Austrian composer, widely recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western classical music. With Haydn and Beethoven he brought the Viennese Classical school to its height. Despite his short life, Mozart composed more than 800 works in almost every classical music genre of his time. Many of his compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the repertoires, including his symphonies, concertos and sonatas for various instruments, chamber music, the Requiem in D minor, the operas Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni.

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Yevgeny Sudbin (born 19 April 1980) is a Russian-born British concert pianist. He studied at the musical school of the Leningrad Conservatory. After his family emigrated to Berlin in 1990, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, then at the Purcell School and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Sudbin has lived in the UK since 1997, and made his debut at The Proms in July 2008. In September 2010, he was appointed visiting professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music. Sudbin has recorded music of Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Medtner, Scarlatti, and Scriabin for the BIS label.

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