Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Colin Davis :: Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 24; Schumann: Piano Concerto

Fresh, tastefull, and technically brilliant

Peter B. Behr | New York, NY, USA | 09/23/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These concertos were recorded at the Barbican in London in September 2006. Colin Davis conducts the excellent London Symphony Orchestra, with which he has longstanding, deep rapport. Davis brings his legendary sense of timing, sense of music, and sensitive support to Evgeny Kissin's splendid accounts of both the Mozart No. 24 and the Schumann piano concertos.

Overall, Kissin's playing is always fresh, tasteful and technically brilliant. His playing is noteworthy for its crystalline musicality, magisterial power, and charming wit and delicacy. Kissin obviously meditated on these works with sincerity and sensitivity. While power is there when appropriate, Kissin'playing he results are distinctive and highly satisfying.

Kissin plays the Mozart in true partnership with the orchestra. His Mozart is modest and charming, and moves with the kind of lovely wit and flashes of power that would put a smile on Mozart's face.

Interestingly, Kissin does not play the Schumann concerto for thrills. He seems more interested in the music as a nuanced, organic structure. Of course, his technical mastery means that when he does choose to deploy a degree of dramatic power, he does just that, true to his own conception.

This CD is recommended not only as a fine addition to your existing collection, but also as a great holiday gift idea.

"

A lovely May-December partnership -- one of Kissin's best re

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 10/02/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Evgeny Kissin has an army of worshipful fans, but I've worried about him in recent years. He was a poet even as a child, and one hoped that his interpretations would only get deeper with age. Instead, Kissin began to grandstand and his technique to coarsen. There's no need to dwell on that, however, because in both these concertos he's back in form. The Schumann in particular has depth and originality -- you feel that Kissin is conveying the whole great russian tradition. Perhaps the May-December union with Colin Davis, a judicious interpreter who likes to make music flow naturally, was the key. Together, they have produced exceptionallly satisfying results, even if the scale of Kissin's Mozart remains romantically grand--not today's prevailing style.



Because it was recorded in the acoustically challenged Barbican, the LSO sounds boomy and murky here, and the piano itself is too distant. This is EMI's first CD with Kissin after he departed from Sony BMG. Despsite the disappointing sonics, they are smart to show him off in concertos, because Kissin excels in that role. His view of Mozart's great K. 491 is large-scale compared to, say, Uchida or the young Perahia, but Davis favors a fairly weighty texture, too, so the approach is consistent. In every movement they phrase with natural sensitivity, but Kissin gies himself a little room for thrills in the fast passagework. He's also given himself new cadenzas of his own devising, but they are suitably classical and restrained (he barely strays from the main theme) -- no sudduen bursts of Horowitzian fireworks.



Kissin made a wonderful Schumann concerto with Giulini on Sony when he was just coming into prominence. Giulini was well into his slow-motion "Tai Chi phase," as one reviewer here calls it. Where Davis probably tamed down the Mozart, here he takes his cue from Kissin's highly flexible romatnic approach -- their reading is energized but filled with longing hesitation. By the clock the tempos are actually slower than in the earlier recording (I should mention that Davis also has a previous, well-liked version with Murray Perahia on Sony). Kissin plays down his mega-technique most of the time. He was, after all, a born Schumann player from the beginning, and here he returns to that dazzling combinaiton of thrills and poetry. Collectors will enjoy comparing this excellent account with a similar one from Pollini on DG."

Very near to perfection.

Abel | Hong Kong | 12/17/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The two concerti in this latest album of Evgeny Kissin (his debut album for EMI) are absolutely classical lovers' hot favourites.

That being so, any new recording inevitably suffers from comparison. In the case of these two works, numerous maestros have previously graced the lovers' shelf: my very own favourites including the Brendel and Haskil (Mozart's No. 24), and Haskil's Schumann concerto for piano and orchestra (Haskil/van Otterloo, 1951), a recording that really seems to me not to have been surpassed since 1951.

Needless to say, Kissin and Sir Colin Davies are fighting a harsh battle in the wake of such predecessors.

Sir Colin's Mozart No. 24 Concerto is masterfully conducted. The tempi for the three movements offer a heart-beat like precision that nowhere tends to be rigid or constricted. Instead, the reading is very expansive and expressive, especially the heart-wrenchingly beautiful last movement collaborated wonderfully by Kissin at the keyboard. If ever Kissin's playing tended to be too straight-jacketed, it must be admitted that he has shown much improvement in this recording, and this Concerto is a very affecting rendition in a finely subtle manner.

Unlike another reviewer's view of these two pieces, I am less inclined to the Schumann Concerto, having heard Clara Haskil's 1951 legendary recording on mono, to which I think Kissin/Colins are unable to surpass.

Even so, the playing is soulful and abounding in emotional spontaneity, and this album presents a very close to perfect rendition of these two popular works, and perhaps, had the sonics been better, would really have been able to top the list. As it is, EMI's recording at the Barbican Centre sounds distant; the contrasts between the tutti and solo parts indistinct if not muddy, and virtually no edge is gained over the mono recordings of Haskil in terms of sound."