Mozart: Piano Concerto No.25 / Piano Sonatas Blu-ray Review
Though I'm loathe to admit it, I'm not a huge Mozart lover. But even I enjoyed this lovely performance by Alfred Brendel and Sir Charles Mackerras leading the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Is there something in your professional life that makes you wince slightly with embarrassment? No, I'm not talking about actual tasks you need to accomplish in your workaday world, but some perhaps tangential information about your likes and dislikes that makes workplace conversation a tad strained at times. Maybe you have an odd bias against Number 2 pencils, for example, even as you toil away at a pencil factory. Or your work at a crayon emporium is hobbled by your abhorrence of periwinkle blue. I've been blessed to make a living with music for most of my adult life, and I'm doubly blessed to be able to share my thoughts about classical music releases on Blu-ray here at Blu-ray.com. But if I were cornered and asked to give my honest to goodness, real opinion of one of the most highly regarded composers of all time, one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the adjective that would most quickly spring to my mind wouldn't be "inspired" (though he undoubtedly was), but rather, "facile." Intellectually, I admire Mozart for his pristine architecture and ebullient musical personality, but emotionally he leaves me largely cold (there are notable exceptions, like the Requiem Mass and The Magic Flute). But if I trot out any of Mozart's manifold piano pieces to play myself on any given day, I can take or leave the bulk of them, unlike, for example, the keyboard masterpieces of J.S. Bach, which I can pore over with an almost obsessive-compulsive zeal, analyzing mere measures for days on end. So there you have it. My review of any Mozart is colored by this admittedly odd predisposition which I'm not entirely certain has any rational basis, but is simply based on the vagaries of that most amorphous of things, "taste." Luckily, I have good sense enough to realize when I'm listening to a spectacular performance of a genuine masterpiece, and that's certainly the case with this Surround Records re-purposed DTS HD-MA 7.1 mix of a lovely run-through of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 (the insert booklet wrongly attributes the key to C minor), with soloist Alfred Brendel accompanied by the marvelous Scottish Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Sir Charles Mackerras.
Alfred Brendel
Mozart's oeuvre is so stuffed to the gills with flashy, showy material that relatively more restrained pieces like K. 503 tended to get lost in the shuffle of time. Pianists, after all, want something virtuosic to show off their years of practice with, and though the C Major concerto certainly offers some technically challenging, if not overwhelming, moments (mostly the quicksilver scales that so define a lot of Mozart's pianistic writing), this is a calmer, surprisingly mature piece from Mozart's adulthood, completed a mere five years before his untimely death. This is a piece that, especially in the first movement, toys with parallel major and minor tonalities with a surprising insouciance for its era. The stormy interludes of C minor unfailingly part for the calmer latitudes of C major, but Mozart weaves themes in and out of these dueling modes with his typical inerrant ease. K. 503 deeply influenced Beethoven, especially in that master's own Fourth Piano Concerto, and the nascent "temperamental" quality that so defines Beethoven's mature work can be heard here, at least in the background, though Mozart's unfailing optimism, even childlike wonder, continue to erupt repeatedly after brief moments of philosophical musing.
Alfred Brendel is sometimes decried for his cerebral approach to even the most impassioned music. I personally find that somewhat ironic in this particular instance, as I frequently decry Mozart for being too cerebral, or at least for affecting me mostly in my head, and not my heart. Strangely, Brendel's crystal clear phrasing and classical elegance here is perfectly in tune with the wonderfully symmetrical world that Mozart erects for the listener. In fact this is a superbly passionate performance in its own way, and despite being originally recorded in 2004, shows none of the arthritic signs that has kept Brendel from some of the more challenging pieces in his repertoire.
I have long though that Sir Charles Mackerras is one of the more underappreciated conductors of our time. If you haven't heard his "period" recordings (somewhat of a misnomer) of the original orchestrations of Brahms' Four Symphonies, you're in for a treat. But everything Mackerras touches is painted with care and an egalitarian phrasing that places just the right emphases on cadences and cadenzas while never losing sight of the overall architecture of the piece. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra is simply one of the finest ensembles around, and their playing here is lovely, spritely in the allegro passages and beautifully lyrical in the Concerto's central Andante.
Brendel closes the program with three Mozart solo piano works, Sonatas in Eb Major (K. 282) and D major (K. 576) and the Fantasia in C minor (K. 396).
As with most of Alexander Jero's Surround Records product, we're offered a re-purposed DTS HD-MA 7.1 mix that recreates hall ambience very well, while sacrificing little if any focus from the instruments themselves. The front three channels are used very well for the piano and orchestra, with the sides and surrounds utilized for ambient spill over and acoustic hall effects. This is a very pleasing recording. Because Jero tends not to supply a lot of supporting information in his insert booklets (and, as an aside, also uses an almost illegible cursive font in them), it's unclear whether this is licensed from one of Brendel's many compact disc collaborations with Mackerras. One way or the other, this is an amazingly clear and clean recording, with a fulsome tone emanating from the piano and some wonderfully warm reed and wind sounds emanating from the orchestra. Fidelity is excellent throughout all frequency ranges, with no anomalies whatsoever to report. Unlike one of the user reviews of this title, I experienced no hang-ups or delays loading this Blu-ray on my PS3, and it played perfectly from start to finish.
I guess I could paraphrase an old ad campaign and say you don't have to be a Mozart lover to love this particular recording. Brendel's playing is precise and nuanced, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under the very capable baton of Sir Charles Mackerras sounds elegantly lustrous. The surround sound repurposing of this recording sounds very good indeed, immersing the listener as if he's in a private listening room with these magnificent artists.
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