MOZART SUEDAMA ENSEMBLE GREILSAMMER - MOZART EARLY PIANO CONCERTOS CD

SKU/Barcode: 822186051498

The early Mozart keyboard concertos, which date from Mozart's mid-teens, were written for harpsichord and orchestra. For years they were often performed in a rather delicate way, whether a harpsichord, fortepiano, or modern grand was used. The first of the three concertos recorded here, however, stands up to a fuller approach. The Piano Concerto No. 5 in D major, K. 175, is a striking work that, perhaps more than any other work of Mozart's adolescence, prefigures further developments with the large scope marked out by the orchestration in its first movement and the ingenious mixture of polyphony and playfulness in the finale, a mixture that Mozart, 10 years later in Vienna, judged too advanced for Viennese audiences and replaced with a simpler substitute. If you reject historical-instrument approaches in Mozart's music on the grounds that Mozart would have wanted a modern piano if he could have heard it, you could hardly come up with a work better suited to the argument than this concerto, with its full complement of winds and liberal use of horns. American pianist David Greilsammer and the small Suedama Ensemble offer a full-blooded interpretation of the work, with a lively, sharply articulated piano part bouncing off the numerous details of the orchestration in the outer movements and engaging in full-throated singing in the lovely slow movement. The other two concertos, the Piano Concerto No. 6 in B flat major, K. 238, and the Piano Concerto No. 8 in C major, K. 246, are considerably less adventurous, and more clearly suited to the harpsichord. Greilsammer backs off considerably here, and the group as a whole contents itself with straightforward, simply proportioned readings. This American recording was apparently made for the small Tabor Foundation in 2005 (the booklet does not enlighten the reader about the background of the recording or of any of the perfomers) and was picked up by France's Na ve label and redecorated with a picture of a discarded toy horse on a dirt road, presumably symbolic of Mozart's laying aside of his early influences in the Piano Concerto No. 5. At times one wonders whether Greilsammer is putting more weight on this work than it can bear -- the themes of the finale are pretty simply laid out -- but the collective work of the performers in bringing to life this sudden growth spurt in Mozart's imagination is impressive.