Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.1 in C, Op.15 (Anderszewski)

This is far from a typical recording, but a superb one nonetheless. In short, it’s pretty fierce, and even a little brutal – about as anti-classical as a recording of this concerto can get.

First off, there’s the glorious sound of the Deutschen Kammerphilharmonie Bremen – the brass is more prominent than usual, but what’s perhaps most striking is the raw, hammer-blow power of the timpani (using period-appropriate hard sticks rather than the usual mallets). The tuttis are as a result considerably fiercer than usual (12:19; 35:02), and the last movement has a deranged, earthy intensity (29:07).

The woodwinds are also spectacular. The bassoon bassoons away like there’s no tomorrow (1:57; 4:50; 6:03), the flutes and oboes are lovely in the development (7:51), and that clarinet basically steals the show in the second movement. (In fact, the whole performance of the second movement is striking – the strings use nearly no vibrato and the clarinet just the merest smidgen of rubato, but everything comes together incredibly expressively. I think it’s a function of how the piano’s relative freedom, especially in the development, sets off everything else. Have yet to hear a performance of this movement that’s been bettered.)

Anderszewski is to Beethoven (kind of) what Cortot was to Chopin – he has a way of finding and highlighting intoxicating detail. In the first movement, lots of overlooked LH material gets nudged to the fore, and there are some really surprising but effective pianissimos (5:05, and 13:34 in the cadenza). The second movement is taken at a faster clip than usual, but this has the effect of giving the melody a lift it usually doesn’t quite have. In the last movement, the second episode’s accents are foregrounded in a pretty fun way (31:22) as are the sharp jabs in the coda’s scales (36:20); the tempo of the lovely final modulation (35:42) is also cleverly held back to build up tension for the final tutti.

Видео Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.1 in C, Op.15 (Anderszewski) канала Ashish Xiangyi Kumar