A glorious upsetting of the balance

Mozart: Piano Concertos K. 414 & 271

I've always loved Karl Barth's interpretation of Mozart's music. He rejected the view of Mozart's music as light and untroubled, always happy, which more or less prevailed until the middle of the twentieth century. "What he translated into music,” he wrote, "was real life in all its discord." This is about more than music criticism, of course; it's a perfect example of Barth's theology of "the shadow-side of Creation". Though Mozart has presented both the light and the darkness, he rejected, according to Barth, a simple even symmetry between the two. "What occurs in Mozart is rather a glorious upsetting of the balance, a turning in which the light rises and the shadows fall, though without disappearing, in which joy overtakes sorrow without extinguishing it, in which the Yea rings louder than the ever-present Nay." An early and quite perfect expression of the light overwhelming the shadows is the A major Piano Concerto K. 414, written in 1782. I love the two A major concertos - Mozart wrote another, K. 488, in 1786 - more than all the rest. I hear in them Mozart's loudest ringing of the Yea.

In a live recording from the Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa's opera house, pianist Andrea Bacchetti and conductor Fabio Luisi present a most impressive, and fetching, version of K. 414. Luisi's operatic experience - I know him best for his recent recordings of Berg's Wozzeck and Meyerbeer's Margherita D'Anjou - allows him to focus more clearly on the drama underlying Mozart's "glorious upsetting of the balance", which is after all what works like The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi Fan Tutte are all about. Andrea Bacchetti is marvellous for his part as the protagonist working with and against the musicians of the Orchestra del Teatro Carlo Felice, as if all were on-stage in an opera.

I was less pleased with the other concerto on the disc, K. 271 from 1777. It is, of course, a fine work, miles ahead of any keyboard concerto written after Bach and unchallenged until Mozart himself started his amazing run with K. 413-15 five years later. But Bacchetti and Luisi are both oddly tentative with their opening, and the movement never takes off. Everything is reset, though, for the lovely slow movement, and the finale zips along nicely, skirting the banalities that less accomplished musicians fall into in certain of Mozart's rondos. Even with one less accomplished movement this is outstanding Mozart, and a worthwhile purchase



This album will be released on October 5, 2018.

Pleasant Mozart from Bologna

The new Ensemble Respighi two-disc set of Mozart Violin Concertos from Concerto Classics, with violinist Domenico Nordico, provides new look at these five popular concertos in bright, fresh live recordings. This isn't profound music, but I think it was an opportunity for the composer, then in his late teens, to make a leap forward. Mozart was working on his operas La finta giardiniera in 1774 and Il re pastore in 1775, but the inherently dramatic concerto form in these works helped him work through certain structures and scenarios that would serve him in good stead in the next decades. Just how far he was to go is evident in the bonus work in this album: the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola of 1779, which is miles above the solo concertos, and written just ahead of his ground-breaking opera Idomeneo.

These are pleasant but hardly world-class performances, as became clear when I recently listened to the 3rd and 5th Violin Concertos with Henryk Szeryng and the New Philharmonia Orchestra under Sir Alexander Gibson. I was so impressed with the great violinist's tone, as well as the electric charge of the orchestral playing. The gap becomes even wider when comparing the new recording with great versions of the Sinfonia Concertante (my favourite is the team of friends: Perlman, Zukerman and Mehta on DGG). These are good enough performances to give an appreciation to the first approximation of Mozart's joyful middle period and his incipient genius, but only that.

Many moods from a Cuban master

From June 18, 2010:

Ignacio Cervantes is best known today for his Danzas Cubanas, 40 pieces that were published in bits & pieces during his lifetime. He was an active patriot in the Cuban rebellions of the 1870s, and spent time abroad in exile as well as in the obligatory Parisian musical pilgrimages. When the Danzas were finally published as a set in 1959, this music became better known. They are now showing up more frequently in concert, on the web, and on CD, with the increase in interest in the piano music of The Americas. They work well as characteristic pieces in recitals, and a few are well-suited as brilliant encores.

Davide Cabassi's new disc of the complete Danzas is not the first, since the whole set fills up a CD nicely. The challenge in complete projects of this sort is to find, or to bring out, enough tonal and rhythmic variety to keep the programme sounding fresh. I think Cabassi has done an exceptional job in this area. He's not afraid to bring out lots of sentiment in a piece like the lovely "Un Requerdo" (#3), and he provides just enough dramatic light and shade to "El Velorio" (#6). There's virtuosity required in "Improvisad" (#15), but, more importantly, Cabassi emphasizes the comic element that Cervantes so cleverly builds in to the work. Throughout the programme you can hear nostalgic sadness lurking beneath the gaiety, and humour taking the edge off the most sentimental pieces.

Through all of these moods Cabassi is supported by a rich and natural piano sound, and it's all put together in a deluxe package by Concerto Classics. This is a very highly recommended disc.

Deluxe Piazzolla and a Pujol World Premiere

From March 2, 2010:

The new Concerto disc "Luminosa Buenos Aires" gives the deluxe treatment to familiar music by Astor Piazzolla, and offers as well the world premiere recording of Maximo Diego Pujol's Double Concerto for Guitar, Bandoneon and Strings. Piazzolla's music has become so popular around the world partly because of the many European and African dance sources that went into the creation of the tango in the immigrant communities of Buenos Aires in the late 19th Century. But it's also because Piazzolla repackaged the original dance forms with jazz and classical strains to create "nuevo tango", a kind of International Style of music that resonates in Paris, Helsinki, and New York as much as it does in its home city. It obviously found a home as well in Parma, where the fine string players of I Musici di Parma provide a luscious mix of appealing music that seems to be over well before the hour-and-a-minute listed on the CD cover. Unlike some Latin-themed discs, there's enough rhythmic and melodic variety to keep one's ears interested.

This isn't the gritty music of knife-wielding thugs dancing with each other from Borges' "History of Tango". That mythic period of Sex & Violence & Tangos is a distant memory by Piazzolla's time. But music like this traffics in distant memories, nostalgia, the dream-world of the past. This world which Piazzolla helped to create is brilliantly continued by Pujol is his new concerto. The whole program is brought to life by the orchestral musicians and by the two soloists: guitarist Giampaolo Bandini and banoneonist Cesare Chiacchiaretta. Balancing two such different solo instruments and a string orchestra doesn't seem an easy task, but these live recordings present a very life-like sound picture, albeit one that stresses the outward sheen of beautiful sounds. This music isn't born from, nor does it induce, deep thinking.

The CD is recommended as much for the general music lover as for the tango aficionado; if you don't know this style of music, it's a great place to start.