Beethoven The Five Piano Concertos Lubin Academy of Ancient Music Hogwood [FLAC]

BEETHOVEN. Piano Concertos Nos. 1-5. Steven * Lubin (fp); Academy of Ancient Music / Christopher Hogwood. L'Oiseau -Lyre Florilegium C) 421 408-10H3 (three records, nas); 421 408-40H3; (f) 421 408-20H3 (three discs, nas: 164 minutes: DDD).



With Mozart's piano concertos now safely enshrined on records (or very nearly so) using period instruments, and with 'early musicians' turning to experiences with Beethoven and even Berlioz, it was to be expected that we would soon have the Beethoven piano concertos done `authentically'. Here, then, comes the first attempt: more, rumour has it, will be following before very long. If the Mozart concertos heard on a fortepiano have posed problems for some of us, by dis- turbing our fixed notions of the music and what it says to us, the Beethoven works pose larger ones. For we are habituated to seeing these works in a symbolic or even metaphysical sense, as (we implicitly recognize) the composer very probably did, in terms of the individual (Beethoven himself) and society, involving conflict, struggle and, of course, ultimate triumph. These records tell us— if, as there is every reason to think they do, they correctly reproduce the sort of sound and balance that Beethoven expected—that the relationship built into the works when they were conceived is rather different from what we have generally sup- posed, for the pianos of Beethoven's time cannot hold their own against the orchestra to the extent that modern ones can, and the sense of the music has in some degree to be freshly understood.
It is also true, however, that the soloist here, Steven Lubin, is not in the traditional virtuoso sense a commanding player. He does not make it sound easy—though nor should he, since without some sense of struggle Beethoven becomes dimi- nished. There is not much grand gesture, partly because the pianos cannot aspire to it. Lubin's playing is serious and thoughtful, mostly taut in its rhythms, and notable most of all for its delicacy and nuance. He uses four instruments, chosen with not only historical correctness in mind but also with a keen ear to the needs of each work. The First Concerto is done with a modern American instrument, by Rodney Regier, modelled on a Viennese one of 1795, by Walter, with a crisp, bright sound. The whole performance has plenty of vitality: Hogwood starts off briskly, with incis- ive rhythms and a sharply defined, almost stormy orchestral sound. Lubin has many sensitive details of timing, shaping the music attentively, some- times pushing urgently towards a cadence: all very aptly tuned to the vigorous, fiery young Beet- hoven. The difference between this performance and a traditional one may be exemplified by such passages as the E flat episode in the development (the soft left-hand texture with the right's line floating above, and the gentle glow of the sequence of chords), or the veiled sound at the distant modulations before the tutti preceding the cadenza, or indeed any music where the piano's role is accompanimental, for this instrument recedes into the texture in a way the modern one cannot. In the Largo I admired Lubin's pure, shapely line—where intensity of tone is impossible, on an early instrument, the player is forced to depend on shaping and articulation, and Lubin does so, often to poetic effect, particularly in some of the high-lying music. Sometimes he lets a lefthand chord spread, a perfectly legitimate way of obtaining extra resonance. (I wish, however, another take had been made of the opening theme, where the final note barely sounds.) In the finale there is a happy touch of the impetuous about the main theme, some tellingly placed accentuation, a good swing to the A minor epi sode and a rhythmic deliberation very characteristic of Lubin's pianism to the G minor one.
For the First Concerto the strings are 6.6.4.3.3; for the Second, which is actually slightly earlier, they are 4.4.2.2.2, and with a rather sweetertoned, more crystalline and slightly more resonant piano, by Derek Adlam, also after a 1795 Walter, the sound in general is more refined and chamber music-like. But there is ample tension and fire in Lubin's playing of the first movement, and he does the cadenza with plenty of power. The instrument's soft colours arc happily heard in the pianissimo G flat major passage in the recapitulation; and the piano's capacity for merging into the orchestra to accompany is shown in the Adagio, where Lubin's clarity of articulation produces some telling detail. The climax near the end of that movement represents one of those moments where you feel that Beethoven might reasonably be wanting a bigger sound than the instrument can supply: but the effect of strained resources answers what he is doing more truthfully than `improving' the piano, to my mind. And this instrument does cope well with the recitative-like con gran espressione passage at the very end. Lubin seems a little awkward in the main theme of the finale; his technique is not always smooth—for example, a series of chords rarely emerges quite uniformly articulated or balanced. But in this music, coupled as it is with passion and urgency, I would not complain. The Third Concerto gets the most consistently passionate performance of all, as it should. Here the piano is by Christopher Clarke after a Johann Fritz instrument of about 1818—a little late for a work of the very early years of the century. The strings here, and in the Fourth, are 8.8.4.4.4. There is a lot of tension in Lubin's playing, with a certain amount of holding back and pressing forward as his view of the musical sense demands; the effect is of a large-scale performance, of the kind that keeps one on the edge of one's seat. Again, he gives a strong and shapely account of the cadenza. I should have liked a better legato (as Beethoven sometimes asks for) at one or two points, and in the Largo the attack of some of the chords might profitably have been more uniform. But here the benefits of a contemporary instrument are particularly marked: the rapid music becomes crisper and sharper of definition, the arpeggios accompanying the wind phrases in the middle a delicate tracery. And the great climax—sempre con gran espressione—is duly exalted. The finale, if less pointedly articulated than it might be, has a deeply serious, fiery performance, sustained and intense.
Concerto No. 4, I daresay, is most people's favourite, which perhaps means that we have most preconceptions about how it ought to be done. I thought Lubin's playing of the opening a shade nonchalant, almost a throwaway (probably anyone brought up on Dame Myra Hess would think the same). This is, in its historical context, so remarkable a concerto opening that I should have thought its special character might aptly have been more clearly underlined. Well, there are many good things in the movement, including the orchestra's shapely enunciation of the main secondary theme, Lubin's unassertive, gently pensive yet alive and glittering playing in the rapid music, and the deeply felt expressive climaxes (the dolce e con espressione passages). But you will find—to go back to my very first point—that the differences in tone-colour and weight make the music significantly different in expression from what we are used to (this goes too, in particular, for the piano solo just after the central tutti). The Andante is taken a good deal more con mob o (Beethoven's instruction) than it usually is; Lubin plays it gently and unassumingly, with limited drama, and it is certainly no less persuasive than in the average exaggerated performance one hears. The finale has plenty of fire, some imaginative touches of rubato, a good deal of delicacy in the high, piano writing, and one or two moments of careless articulation. In both the Fourth and the Emperor the piano is by Rodney Regier, maker of the one for the First Concerto, but here the model is an 1824 Graf (the standard for Viennese pianos of Beethoven's maturity), and it is suitably larger in tone, with strings 12.12.8.6.6. The opening of the Fifth, done with modest tonal resources on the piano and no fulsome rhetoric, yet sounding fresh and original, provides still more food for thought about Beethoven's intentions. The movement is taken at a lively pace, with crisp orchestral playing: how bold and new-sounding this music must have seemed to its early audiences? And here it still does, I might add. In some passages there is a sense of effort in Lubin's playing, but the whole is very impressive, with the high-lying C flat material coming across with the greatest of delicacy and expressive refinement. In the Adagio there is some compelling soft playing from him, but I do wish he had been more attentive to the weak-to-strong slurring in the pages of semiquavers (accompanying the wind recapitulation)—some of them might as well have been slurred in ordinary groups of four as far as the listener is concerned, and Beethoven's intended effect is lost. I could have done with more of sheer exuberance in the finale, but there is much fineness of detail to enjoy.
In all, then, a set that demands to be taken very seriously by anyone who loves Beethoven or thinks he knows and understands these very familiar pieces. These performances are not the last word on period-style Beethoven concertos, but they are a pretty impressive first word—well thought out and executed by both Lubin and Hogwood, with some spirited and sensitive orchestral playing and a generally high standard of ensemble, and excellently recorded too, with a well managed solo/orchestra balance—different from what you may be used to in Beethoven concertos, but perhaps closer to what Beethoven heard in his imagination than anything recorded before.
Stanley Sadie
Gramophone 5/88