Unless a Choral Fantasy is waiting in the wings, this new disc rounds out Martin Helmchen’s collaboration with Andrew Manze and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in the mature piano concertante works of Beethoven. The Second and Fifth Concertos were released in October last year (12/19) and the First and Fourth this spring (9/20).

Every encounter with the incomparable Andrew Manze seems to bring surprising new insights; fortunate the soloist who can rely on his imaginative direction. In the C minor Concerto, he evokes a Beethoven who is neither angry nor brutal but the confident young master unashamed of casting a glance over his shoulder at Mozart’s C minor Concerto, K491. Manze and his orchestra create the mise en scène into which Helmchen strides easily, exercising both heroic gestures and poetic eloquence.

Helmchen is extraordinarily adept at creating vivid contrasts between areas of repose and eruptions of energy. Without being fussy, he is ever on the lookout for the telling detail, be it in phrasing or passagework. His trills are wonderfully varied and always suited to their rhetorical context. If it is axiomatic to claim that Beethoven players stand or fall on the strength of their slow movements, in the hallowed climes of the Largo Helmchen must be declared a champion. The Rondo is fleet, fiery without being driven, emerging in a blaze of clarity. Drawing on rich and varied pianistic resources, and with a disarming sincerity of utterance, Helmchen holds the attention from beginning to end.

For the Triple Concerto, Helmchen is joined by two of his regular chamber music partners, violinist Antje Weithaas and cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker. The interaction and blending of their distinctive sounds – Weithaas’s angelic purity, Hecker’s trenchant fruitiness and Helmchen’s silvery focus – create something of a sonic banquet. But it is the hand-in-glove ensemble of the three that is likely to win new fans for this ignored stepchild of Beethoven’s concertos. Detractors have called the piece a piano trio with backup. That said, if Manze and his Berliners aren’t cast as the forceful antagonists they were in the C minor Concerto, their hearty presence provides both coalescence and stimulus in this splendid performance. It’s difficult to think of another reading of the Polish Rondo that combines haughty elegance and jovial high spirits in happier symbiosis.