The quote often attributed to Mark Twain that ‘Wagner’s music is better than it sounds’ can be applied to the performances in this Beethoven piano concerto cycle. ECM’s over-resonant ambience seemingly places home listeners in a distant balcony seat, where loud tuttis diffusely congeal, and the already underpowered strings frequently get swamped by the woodwinds and brass, sometimes to blowsy effect (try the Third Concerto’s opening ritornello). This proves particularly problematic in slow, sustained music (the central movements of the Second and Fifth Concertos, for example), where the strings often disappear on account of their threadbare sonority and minimum vibrato. While Alexander Lonquich is evenly balanced within the ensemble, which he conducts from the piano, the treble registers tend to dominate; it’s the aural equivalent of peering through the wrong end of a telescope. This markedly contrasts with the clarity and robustness distinguishing other modern-instrument, period-style Beethoven concerto cycles such as Bronfman/Zinman, Berezovsky/Dausgaard and Barnatan/Gilbert.

As a consequence, the sound quality sells Lonquich’s spirited and engaging pianism somewhat short. He brings plenty of zest and brio to the Second Concerto’s outer movements, while delineating the first-movement cadenza’s fiery counterpoint as if he was improvising it on the spot, and that’s a compliment. Because of the pianist’s headlong yet steady momentum throughout the C major Concerto’s first movement, his choices for when to modify the basic tempo are all the more meaningful.

The C minor Concerto fares best in the pianist’s ripely inflected Largo and rhythmically grounded Rondo. Lonquich arpeggiates the G major Concerto’s opening chord and phrases his opening statement freely, but is answered in turn by anaemic strings. Fortunately, the music gathers shape and profile as it progresses. In the Andante con moto, there’s a stark contrast between Lonquich’s plaintive cantabile arcs and the strings’ sempre staccato articulation, which comes off more jaunty than stern to my ears. In the Emperor Concerto’s ritornello, Lonquich’s virtuoso bravura compensates for undernourished strings. His other-wordly legato phrasing and tapered trills in the Adagio are wonderful, as is the decisive authority that both soloist and orchestra bring to the Rondo. All cadenzas are Beethoven’s: Lonquich plays No 4’s more common option (the one favoured by Schnabel, Fleisher and Arrau), and the longest of the three that Beethoven composed for No 1.

This review originally appeared in the SPRING 2025 issue of International Piano