The more or less simultaneous release on CD and LP of these two patiently assembled and much admired Mozart piano concerto cycles necessitates a postscript to my comments last month on the records which rounded off the Brendel cycle. All the performances have been faithfully and often illuminatingly chronicled in these pages by RG, SP and SS. In the autumn of 1979, RL took preliminary stock of the Brendel cycle at somewhere near its midway point. In that review (10/79, page 664), he admirably stated Brendel's achievement and appeal when he noted ''a classical poise, distinction of mind, and a keen sensitivity that will continue to reward repeated hearing''. At the same time, he went on to express a private preference for many of the already extant Perahia performances. Perahia's blend of ''instinct, intellect, and sensibility'', he suggested, was extraordinarily persuasive. Sense and sensibility: it is an old opposition, though the truly great Mozart player will give us both, the one element persistently modifying the other.
Having heard, and heard again, Perahia's cycle as a whole I would not wish to query in any way the beauty of readings which seem, at best, to be the product of the finest kind of youthful charm and intuition. There are occasions, mainly among the early concertos, when his playing is unrivalled in its energy, grace and tonal sensitivity. In the first truly great Concerto, K271, you might think Brendel the high-minded governess, Perahia the affectionate companion of ''the marvellous boy''. (The phrase is Wordsworth's on Chatterton, but it will do equally well to evoke Perahia's Mozart.) But charz alone will not carry you through this great cycle of works and as we pass through the valley of the shadow of K466 on through to K595 itself I have often been left wondering whether, at this point, the soloist-conductor can reasonably carry so great a burden. I have also been left wondering, though to a less serious degree, whether Perahia is yet within hailing distance of Brendel in his intellectual grasp of what he is about.
Intellectually, Brendel is certainly a formidable rival, difficult to compete with when, as I suggested last month writing of his account of K467, innovatory thinking is matched by the finest kind of keyboard articulation and the loveliest kind of singing tone in the lyric passages. There are those, I know, who do not especially warm to Brendel's persistently forensic approach to the music he plays; as a professional scrutineer of texts and a fascinated reader of the musical entrails he has made as many enemies as he has won admiring friends. Yet you cannot reasonably put Mozart before a modern audience without decent scholarship and an acute, if necessarily pragmatic, feel for the kind of stylistic adjustments which that scholarship, modern instruments, and modern ears require. In this respect, Brendel is a more formidable Mozartian than Perahia. Brendel's thinking about disputed tempos, about in-fill, about embellishment, and about how to select, create, and project suitable cadenzas is more rigorous than anything Perahia manages to provide. It is not simply that many of Brendel's solutions seem right in the comparative safety of the study; they come well off the page as well in that all-important moment of communication with the audience. In terms of solutions to well-known problems, Brendel and Perahia are often diametrically opposed to one another, as we can hear in the slow movement of K503 or if we compare their solution of such famous cruxes as the second movements of K466, bars 49-50 and K488, bars 64-8 where Perahia's solutions seem (there are no real certainties here) as implausible as Brendel's seem apt.
''This world,'' wrote Horace Walpole in 1776 ''is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.'' Brendel to some extent sustains the sense of Mozart's piano concertos being one of civilization's richest explorations of the comic (in the widest sense of that frequently misconstrued term) genre. Tragedy, as such, is rarely on the agenda here, which is a problem for the man of sensibility who may easily lapse into sentimentality if he is not careful; a pitfall I am not sure Perahia always avoids. His sensitive pianism often leads him briefly, but critically in works so finely constructed as these, into subtle arrests of rhythm and dying falls of tone which undermine the music's classical—and, by devolution, its symphonic and dramatic—structuring. At times the ECO players seem aware of this; more than once I noted the exemplary principal oboe giving a rather more classical shape to a melody than his soloist-director had previously implied.
Being your own conductor, as Perahia is, makes great demands. Brendel chose from the outset to be accompanied by Sir Neville Marriner's Academy of St Martin in the Fields who are finely attuned to his every need. There is nothing to choose between the St Martin players and the ECO; they include the most accomplished, most civilized chamber musicians in the world and their playing is a continual source of delight and illumination. But there are times in the Perahia cycle when the drama is less clearly or less completely registered than it is by Brendel and Marriner. Sometimes, under Marriner, a performance takes time to settle. The opening of K466 is rather prim (send for Furtwangler, I kept thinking) and the argument of the ritornello of K503 is less clearly laid out than it is by, for example, Sir Colin Davis in that very fine Philips performance with Bishop-Kovacevich (6500 431, 4/74—nla). Buf if K503 starts hesitantly, Brendel's command of what follows is remarkable. This is a live performance, the only one in the set, something which seems (at some small cost in immediacy of piano sound) to add to the sense of discovery in Brendel's unfolding of the long first movement. Where Brendel and Marriner never lose their way, once launched, Perahia sometimes done. In K503 the exposition sounds splendid (aided by resplendent CBS sound) but the recapitulation is less than commanding. Perahia also takes a more diversionary view of the finale than Brendel who seems like a man dancing on the edge of a precipice, the wonderful F major episode bringing an uncanny kind of relief.
Brendel is at his best and Perahia at his most self-indulgent in K488 (the Philips sound remarkably fresh despite its years). Here Perahia's approach is too overtly sentimental. Unhappily, both players seem to miss out on K491 which only goes to show that you shouldn't trade in your valued LPs. I shall, for instance, keep my much prized Kempff record of K488 and K491 (DG 2535 204, 12/76). In K491 Perahia is too decorous and though Brendel settles to give quite a good performance, the opening is oddly chilly, nervously on edge in a way which is counter-productive for the listener. Neither pianist fails, you will be relieved to hear, in K595. I have yet to hear a performance of this sublime work to equal the one I heard from Clifford Curzon, and the Berlin Philharmonic under George Szell in Salzburg in 1964. (What genius was there: Szell had great skill as a Mozart accompanist as his records with Serkin still testify.) On record, I am always tempted to use Clara Haskil's 1958 recording with Fricsay and the Bavarian State Orchestra as a touchstone (in a seven-LP set or singly on Compact Disc—Philips 6768 366, 11/83; CD 412 254-2PH, 11/84). Orchestrally, Fricsay and Marriner have the edge over Perahia. Brendel, characteristically, takes a classical view of the work. His finale is almost impish (no 'smiling-through-tears' here) and the Larghetto, at crotchet = 80, is pleasingly free of extraneous sentiment. Ever the man of sensibility, Perahia takes the Larghetto crotchet = 64 and he plays the finale with flatter phrasing and less lift to the 6/8 rhythm than either Fricsay or Marriner. What he principally lacks in the slow movement is the unerring simplicity of touch which Haskil, at crotchet = 68, so effortlessly manages.
Significantly, Brendel adds to the concertos Nos. 5-27, the Double and Triple Concertos, K242 (in Mozart's two-piano version) and K365: mainstream Mozart played with a good deal of relish and resilience by Brendel and Imogen Cooper (also available singly: 416 364-1PH; CD 416 364-2PH). Perahia, by contrast, has chosen to give us two charming records of very early Mozart piano music from the period when Mozart was paraphrasing or imitating the work of German contemporaries, most notably J. C. Bach, and when he was lost in pre-pubertal admiration for the works of J. S. Schroter, the German composer with the alluring keyboard manner, who settled in London, eloped to Scotland, and died even younger than Mozart was to do.
The choice confirms, in a sense, Perahia's fascination with Mozart the 'marvellous boy'. It is an attractive view of Mozart and one which I'm delighted Perahia—by any standards and in any age, a Mozart player of rare pedigree—has given us. But if we are thinking of complete cycles, of a set of records to which we might reasonably turn for sureness of scholarship and sureness of musical touch at almost every point, then the Brendel must be a clear first choice. Recorded over a longer period than the Perahia/CBS, the Philips set is still technically very good throughout. I would have liked fuller notes and more enterprising editing and layout for both sets than either Philips (marginally the better of the two) or CBS gives us. So great an undertaking deserves exemplary annotation. But the music is the thing and no one who is fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy the Mozart piano concertos at one fell swoop should be deterred from investing in the Philips set which has already become for me a musical vade-mecum of an altogether special importance and distinction.'