Writing of this live performance (an amalgam of several concerts given in Norway this year) the producer notes “the danger left in” and “the fire and fantasy of great artists who do not play safe”. Yet while I welcome the lucidity and innate musical qualities of Andsnes and Berglund it is hard to reconcile their ‘sweet reasonableness’ with this concerto’s fin de siecle opulence. The temperature is kept low throughout and the heat engendered by other live and classic recordings is avoided, or aristocratically distanced (a far cry, in other words, from Van Cliburn’s largess – RCA, 10/59, nla – or Martha Argerich’s inflammatory brilliance). Certainly pianist and conductor are in accord with one another. Berglund’s opening to the central Intermezzo is unusually restrained and Andsnes’s entry is very low-key. Tempos throughout are brisk and natural and Andsnes chooses the grander of the two cadenzas (a surprise, given his overall fleetness and circumspection).
The concerto ends in a storm of rhythmic applause and Andsnes announces his encore, the Etude-tableau, Op. 39 No. 6 played, once more, with admirable control but without the wildness and excitement of, say, Kissin on his early Sony disc. The selection from Op. 33 is polished and musicianly and the transition from darkness to light in No. 3 is achieved with a special sensitivity and finesse. But No. 6 (an epic in miniature, if the contradiction be allowed) should surely sound more heroic and made me wonder whether, overall, Andsnes’s temperament is too equable for such music. Others may, of course, welcome what they see as an admirable fusion of sense and sensibility.
The recordings, like the performances, are exceptionally smooth, and admirers of this princely young pianist may like to know that his next disc will be devoted to Nielsen.'