It is years since I heard the first movement of the Emperor Concerto directed and played as grandly and thrillingly as it here by Sanderling and the Bavarian RSO. During the time of Furtwangler, Klemperer et al, it was ever thus, but nowadays it is more usual for conductors to subvert or merely botch the drama and heroic reach of the music.
I mention the conductor first because, in this movement, he is primus inter pares. It is the orchestra that proposes the motion, the pianist who interestedly, delightfully, discursively and occasionally vehemently seconds it. And it is here that I have a problem with Mitsuko Uchida, whose principal aim in the first movement seems to be to match the orchestra’s prognosis word for word. This can’t be done literally, of course, since the solo part provides the pianist with all manner of descants and diversions. To a pianist like Kempff, these descants and diversions were the very life-blood of the music, a continuous source of inspiration and joy. Uchida plays with discernment and care in the quieter passages but elsewhere is generally concerned to toe the orchestral line, marching strongly on, lines well dressed, eyes to the front. In the event, I found myself turning back to the orchestra itself – to its moments of fantasy and quiet rumination – for relief from this somewhat tautologous view of the movement’s dramatic dispositions.
Uchida’s playing of the slow movement is calm and full of insight, trills and ornaments finely timed and sounded; and the finale is generally splendid, though, as in the first movement, her tendency to smooth over Beethoven’s carefully placed staccato markings means that there are moments when the solo playing lacks rhythmic ‘lift’. (Rather conspicuously so, given Sanderling’s own exacting way with the dramatic interplay of legato and staccato articulation.)
There is much pleasure to be had from Uchida’s scrupulous and vibrant account of the 32 Variations on an Original Theme. The sound, too, is first-rate.'