Both of these concertos were captured live in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall and present an exciting and intelligent young partnership, well worth preserving on disc.
As the giddy rush of the opening ‘Toccata’ amply reveals, Leif Ove Andsnes is a fearlessly secure advocate of the Britten. At the same time, his playing has an unflustered, aristocratic poise about it, and he never makes an ugly noise, even in the most thunderous bravura passages. His soft tone, too, is ravishing, as you can hear at the start of the ‘Impromptu’ (truly cantabile as marked) or in the delicatissimo writing of the ensuing ‘music-box’ episode from fig. 43 (4'53''). In all of this Paavo Jarvi and the CBSO play their full part, and the whole performance is both probingly characterized and clearly the product of considerable thought and meticulous preparation. Just occasionally, I wondered whether Jarvi might have allowed his fine players slightly more expressive leeway: in the ghostly ‘Waltz’, for instance, the principal clarinet’s unforgettably tender dolcissimo high E at fig. 37 (4'23'') somehow doesn’t raise the usual goose-bumps. Competition, of course, is fierce, and all three of my chosen comparisons possess exceptional strengths of their own, but this splendidly dashing and consistently stimulating newcomer distils its own adrenalin and is certainly worth experiencing.
The Shostakovich is more controversial, a performance of daring extremes and high-octane brilliance. Even more than in the Britten, the underlying elements of mock irony, unnerving instability and gleeful burlesque are mined for all (and, ultimately, perhaps rather more than) they are worth. There’s no denying the enormous physicality and gripping drama that these gifted artists bring to bear, but unfortunately the finale’s (presumably intentional?) sledge-hammer wit and ruthless virtuosity wear less well on repetition, and anyone weaned on, say, Andre Previn’s altogether more humane and playful 1962 reading with Leonard Bernstein and the NYPO will be in for a rude awakening. Not always to my taste, then, but as an exhilarating ‘one-off’ this version has its place, and many will understandably thrill to the extravagant exhibitionism on show. As at the end of the Britten, the applause has not been edited out.
Considering the problems of recording live, Engineer Mike Clements has masterminded a vividly truthful sound picture. As a bonus, star-trumpeter Hakan Hardenberger (such an impeccable soloist in the Shostakovich) teams up with Andsnes for a raptly commanding account of Enescu’s haunting Legend (written in 1906, the same year as the Paris premiere of his impressive First Symphony).R1 '9913004'