This is a weird and not-so-wonderful record that I am slightly surprised to find being marketed under EMI's colours. Technically, it is all over the place, with an astonishing discrepancy in levels between, say, the start of the first movement of the Fourth Concerto and its finish. The start has its own built-in surprise when Kovacevich decides to arpeggiate the opening G major chord. It sounds more like the start of ''Semprini's Serenade'' than a Beethoven concerto; but Czerny, it seems, once heard Beethoven do this. Having got over the arpeggio shock, one is then confronted with a blatant edit at the end of the piano's solo statement, with the orchestra perceptibly edged up for its B major rejoinder.
The recording was made in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House and is noticeably less spacious and refined than the sound on Kovacevich's earlier (late 1960s) Philips discs. That said, it is difficult to tell to what extent the occasional blotchiness of the EMI sound and the metallic glare on higher-lying piano tone is the work of the engineers or the performers. Certainly, Kovacevich now takes a pianistically less refined, more openly aggressive approach to the outer movements of the C major Concerto. Some of the playing, especially in the finale cadenza, is properly Beethovenian in its drive and iconoclastic rumbustiousness. But the last movement as a whole lacks buoyancy; it is more Allegro furioso than Allegro scherzando. In other places, Kovacevich (as he is now known, though he is still called Bishop-Kovacevich on the sleeve) takes a broader view of the music. The new account of the Largo of the First Concerto is more obviously measured and searching; and the new reading of the finale of the Fourth Concerto is more spacious.
Like practically every other pianist who has attempted to direct these concertos from the keyboard, Kovacevich has some success with No. 1 and a lot to answer for in No. 4 where the orchestral playing lacks the culture, the confidence, and the accuracy that the BBC SO achieved under Colin Davis at his youthful, imaginative best. As IM said when Philips reissued Concertos 3 and 4, and the Emperor, in the Bishop-Kovacevich/Davis performances (12/89) those older performances are wonderful bargains: the playing ''unidiosyncratic, yet full of imagination'', the general level of intensity more akin to that of a live performance than a studio-made version. In virtually all respects, the Philips discs are the better buy. They also offer more logical couplings than this present issue.'