Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos 25 & 27

Album review

Among the hundreds of recordings of late Mozart piano concertos on the market, including many of this particular pairing, this one of Poland's Piotr Anderszewski at the keyboard and conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is a major standout. Though played on a modern piano, it brings together several trends that have lately been explored in historical-performance recordings, and the result, especially in the Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503, is a vast canvas teeming with details, perfectly controlled. Anderszewski applies interpretive freedom to the piano part without breaking the boundaries of the style: sample the finale of the C major concerto, where the pairs of chords that end the phrases of piano passagework are treated slightly differently each time. He leads the Chamber Orchestra of Europe from the piano, and here he really excels, catching the huge strides in orchestration Mozart made in this work and giving it almost the flavor of Weber. His piano work is brilliant and arresting, but he gives full space to the orchestra's wind players, and the whole has a chamber flavor (something he has said he was aiming for) despite its vast scope and despite the fact that this is not a small-group performance. The Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595, is also very strong, given the same kind of liveliness and made very tuneful, rightfully avoiding the usual autumnal quality (Mozart wasn't planning on dying when he wrote this work). A richly detailed, precise, and exciting treatment of the most difficult of all the Mozart piano concertos, and a fine entry in what is apparently becoming an ongoing series from Anderszewski.

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