Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 24 & 25

Album review

Dutch fortepianist Ronald Brautigam has a long and successful track record of historically oriented keyboard recordings, many of which have delivered startling but coherent new interpretations of familiar classics. That appears to be his intention here with this recording of Mozart's two most substantial piano concertos, the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, and Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503, with historical-instrument group Die Kölner Akademie under conductor Michael Alexander Willens. That group, too, has a fresh sound that highlights Mozart's glorious wind writing. Whether the pieces all come together here into convincing interpretations is something individual listeners will have to judge. The emphasis is placed oddly on the orchestral parts, which are broken up into small details; the brooding, Beethovenian opening theme of K. 491, for example, is treated almost as a quiet introduction building toward the orchestral tutti. Then, when the piano does enter, it's set way back in the balance, having almost the effect of the concertino group in a Baroque concerto grosso. The engineering from BIS may have contributed to this effect (and it's worth noting that the CD was auditioned here on a good conventional stereo, not one with Super Audio capability). But it's likely to be disconcerting; sample the K. 491 concerto, especially, to see how you like the approach. The Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503, fares perhaps a bit better in that it's a more spread-out, atomized work to begin with. Brautigam and Willens seem to be assembling all its little chunks into a whole. The originality of this release can't be questioned, but its conception certainly can be.

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