Mozart: 9. / 27. Klavierkonzert

Chronique

The Col Legno label has released an intriguing series of performances by the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento, from the northeastern Italian region where Classical-era Austrian traditions run deep. All have minimal graphic design, but the overall effect is not impersonal; the orchestra plays in its own auditorium with quite a bit of what one imagines to be youthful enthusiasm, and the notes are highly subjective (in this case, one learns a lot about what's it's like to grow up surrounded by Mozart). In these two familiar concertos, the orchestra asserts itself as an equal partner to an unusual degree. The group is fairly small, but the performances have some of the faults common to many modern-instrument Mozart recordings. There's nothing wrong with a detailed differentiation of the orchestra part, but the big crescendo in the closing-theme material in the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat, K. 595, is too much. The performances don't completely hold together, although the more spacious Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, works better on the whole; the Piano Concerto No. 27, Mozart's last, loses something of its innocent tone. The chief attraction here is the playing of Serb pianist Jasminka Stancul, a natural Mozartian with a consistently liquid smoothness in the passagework and a nice grasp of the basic concept of the recording, which is to have soloist and orchestra bump up against each other a bit. This isn't a recording for those allergic to the symphony-orchestra-program type of Mozart playing, but it has a certain liveliness that gives it a compelling quality even if one raises an eyebrow, or two, at some of what goes by.

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