The Concerto box in DG’s Beethoven Edition is inevitably a very mixed bag, and quite different from its equivalent six-LP box in their 1970s Beethoven Edition. That limited itself to the central works – Kempff in the five regular piano concertos, Ferras with Karajan in the Violin Concerto, David Oistrakh in the Romances and Schneiderhan-Fournier-Anda in the Triple Concerto. In this new set the juvenilia and completed fragments are also included.
One might criticize the choice of Pollini’s earlier concerto cycle, when both his later one with Abbado (6/94) and the Zimerman/Bernstein (11/92) are among the alternatives available to DG. None the less, on balance it is preferable to that later Pollini, when any chill or reserve in his playing is counterbalanced by the warmth of his accompanists, the octogenarian Bohm in the last three concertos, Jochum (in early digital recordings) in Nos. 1 and 2. Anne-Sophie Mutter’s early recording of the Violin Concerto with Karajan makes an excellent choice, but Karajan is a more dominating conductor in the Triple Concerto. His young trio of soloists – Yo-Yo Ma and Mark Zeltser as well as Mutter – are full of imagination but hardly the best-matched team.
I welcome the choice of Gil Shaham in the two Romances, sweetly lyrical on an intimate scale, but the problems facing the compilers in the extra works are shown by the fact that the E flat Piano Concerto of 1784 (completed, like the rare Romance cantabile, by the Swiss musicologist, Willy Hess) comes in a recording licensed from Berlin Classics. The Romance is a curious five-minute piece with piano, flute and bassoon soloists and it has never been available here before. Like the other juvenilia, the E flat Piano Concerto of 1784 and the first movement of a C major Violin Concerto (probably 1790-92), it is attractive and fresh but not very individual. None the less, in good performances all the rarities are very welcome, particularly when the whole package has been squeezed on to only five CDs. What is rather disappointing is the documentation, not so much the essays, often excellent, as the absence of detail on recording dates and sources in both this volume and that of the piano sonatas.'