A decade ago Herbert Schuch recorded Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the WDR SO, coupling it with the Piano Concerto by Viktor Ullmann. In his rather unfavourable review (Oehms, 5/13), David Gutman lamented the pianist’s unsmiling phrasing as well as the missed opportunity to offer the cadenza Ullmann composed for the Beethoven.

On this new release, Schuch pairs Beethoven’s Op 15 with the 1923 Piano Concerto by Erwin Schulhoff – another pianist/composer, like Ullmann, who was killed by the Nazis – and I think David would be pleased, as this time around Schuch appends the cadenza Schulhoff wrote for this Beethoven concerto (a bonus track offering the entire first movement, in fact; Schuch plays the third, longest and wildest of Beethoven’s own cadenzas on the primary account). And I’m happy to report that this Beethoven performance is a delight overall. Schuch comes across as a sparkling raconteur, one who knows how to make his storytelling especially vivid, whether he’s pellucidly articulating a florid passage or sculpting a melody. Listen, say, to the way he plays the long, ascending trill in the slow movement (starting at 7'20"), making a slow diminuendo that draws us to listen closer (Beethoven asks for a crescendo here, but Schuch’s editorial choice is ravishing). Or try at 1'13" in the finale, where he gives the bass line a stentorian tone then melts a moment later into the most sweetly confidential lyricism.

Tung-Chieh Chuang is an excellent Beethovenian, too, eliciting equally characterful, highly sensitive playing from the WDR SO throughout. Note, for example, how magically he manoeuvres the dramatic shift from G major to E flat at 6'40" in the first movement. Schulhoff’s cadenza, unsurprisingly, includes some harmonies that Beethoven wouldn’t have dreamt of, yet there’s nothing especially jarring, and the intricately contrapuntal writing is quite effective.

Schulhoff’s Concerto is also brilliantly done. The composer studied with Debussy and Reger (among others) and was friends with Berg, and Schuch seems to balance the solo part neatly between the Impressionist and Expressionist, tilting towards Scriabin-like ecstasy in a few spots (as at 3'02" in the Sostenuto section on track 5). He’s especially persuasive in the brief Allegro alla jazz movement (with its noisy battery of percussion), where his playing has a buoyancy and frothiness that projects the nose-thumbing humour in the music without forcing it. Claire-Marie Le Guay and Louis Langrée (Accord, 1/06) paint this oddball work in more vibrant colours, perhaps, and a recent Delos release with Dominic Cheli and James Conlon presents it with stunning clarity of detail, but Schuch and Chuang’s poetically intelligent interpretation is equally endearing.