Performances of Beethoven's first two piano concertos on a fortepiano with a small orchestra of period instruments require the listener to make a mental adjustment and discard some of his long-held conceptions of the works' weight and of the tonal relationship between soloist and orchestra. Steven Lubin in the L'Oiseau-Lyre issue (of all five concertos) used two copies of a Walter instrument contemporaneous with the composition of the concertos (i.e. the 1790s): Melvyn Tan plays a copy of a Streicher model of 1814 whose greater sustaining power and sonority (if they aren't merely the result of discreet manipulation in the recording process) allow the solo part to stand forth rather more—Lubin's delicacy, attractive as it was, in places made him seem too self-effacing—and whose more extended compass enables him to use Beethoven's own cadenzas. This is, frankly, a dubious advantage, as these were written much later in a very different style which sticks out like a sore thumb, and the enormous length of the cadenza to the C major Concerto—well over a third the length of the rest of the movement!—wildly distorts the Allegro's proportions. Czerny's metronome marks (the subject of much argument) have been followed, making the outer movements of No. 1 and the finale of No. 2 slightly faster than on the L'Oiseau-Lyre recording.
Tan is a player of great fluency and clarity who, however, makes less of harmonic subtleties and overall gives some impression of coldness and inflexibility, amounting in the C major Concerto almost to matter-of-factness. There is less joyousness and sense of character in its finale, and the Largo in particular does not approach Lubin's in poetic atmosphere. The Adagio of the B flat work gains by the greater cantabile tone of Tan's fortepiano. The orchestral contribution (with many of the same players appearing in both teams) on the whole shows greater finesse in shaping than the piano's, and while Norrington is fully alive to the youthful Beethoven's energy and thrust, his fortes are rather less aggessive than in the rival issue. (He should have insisted, though, on a retake of the scale 38 seconds into the Adagio of No. 2, where one of the violins plays a wrong note.) The recorded quality here is crisp and clear; but there's a slightly disconcerting change of atmosphere at 2'05'' into the finale of No. 1.'