It is over four years since the Viennese pianist, Till Fellner, winner of the 1993 Clara Haskil Competition in Vevey, signed a contract with Erato, but since then only three major issues have appeared, all highly praised, Beethoven’s Second and Third Concertos (9/95), a solo Schubert disc (4/98) and an unusual coupling of Schumann’s Kreisleriana and the Sonata of the short-lived Julius Reubke (10/96). This Mozart coupling imaginatively brings together what Misha Donat’s excellent note describes as “two concertos in military style”. The only disc listed on the Gramophone Database with this same coupling is from Rudolf Serkin’s late and rather heavy-handed Mozart series with Abbado and the LSO. The crisp, fresh, sparkling playing of Fellner provides a total contrast, and the most relevant comparisons are with Schiff and Perahia (now only available as a 12-disc set).
Though Fellner is a former pupil of Brendel, his Mozart style is quite different: lighter, with articulation of diamond-like crispness and precision, enhanced by the excellent Erato recording, cleanly separated. It is a shade drier than the one Decca gave to Schiff, even though they were both made at the same venue, the Salzburg Mozarteum, with the same outstanding orchestra. Not that the accompaniments, with the players led from the first violin desk, have the imagination of those under Sandor Vegh, but in a way the cooler, more objective manner matches Fellner’s style rather better. My one reservation is that in works where repeated-note themes and motifs regularly appear (one aspect of the works’ military quality), Alexander Janiczek does not always keep rhythms as buoyant as they are on the rival discs. The central development section of the first movement of K503, for example, sounds a little square.
In that respect the soloist is hardly at fault and his shaping of phrases, particularly in the expressive slow movements, is at once poetic and unmannered, if less personal than with Schiff or Perahia. Speeds are virtually identical to those of Schiff, but in such a movement as the finale of K459, the latter sounds faster, even a little breathless, thanks to the more metrical accompaniment. The characterful fugato writing in that movement, too, has less weight and panache. Even so, in a keenly competitive area of the repertory, this Erato issue, with its clear, vivid sound, certainly holds its place, a fresh and revealing coupling.'