Another month, another Schumann Piano Concerto. It’s always exciting when an artist of Angela Hewitt’s stature takes on such central Romantic repertoire as this but I’m afraid the anticipation wrote cheques that the reality simply couldn’t cash. Hewitt’s major departure in comparison with the recordings listed below is a steadier tempo in the finale, apparently following the score’s metronome marking. The passagework is crystal clear and ‘all that scurrying about…during the most difficult moment of the concerto…[sounds] easy and coherent’ (Hewitt’s booklet-note). It also makes it sound less virtuoso showpiece, more worthy trudge, and about as interesting as a week of turkey sandwiches. In terms of timing, the recordings by Andsnes, Shelley and Uhlig all fall between 10'13" and 10'23" for the finale, against Hewitt’s 11'38". Was Schumann adept with the metronome or cack-handed like Beethoven? Is it even his own marking, or one added by Clara or a later editor? It’s uncharacteristic and depressing for a pianist of Hewitt’s intelligence to subordinate her musicianship to something so mechanical and debatable as a metronome marking.

Elsewhere, in the first movement, for example, Hewitt’s ruminative slowness masquerades as ‘depth’, her choppy cadenza defusing the dramatic tension of the work, while the central Intermezzo is businesslike, dispatched with little evident affection. Once again, the clarity of the passagework that opens Op 92 captures none of Florian Uhlig’s sense of swirling mystery. He’s also fleeter of finger than Hewitt in the second idea (from c5'30") and a more charismatic soloist, better attuned to the Romantic turbulence of Schumann’s sound world, both here and in Op 134.

Nevertheless, I prefer the DSO Berlin to Uhlig’s Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and would draw attention to some ravishing woodwind and horn-playing (despite a rather blowy clarinet early in the Concerto). The piano, though – Hewitt’s beloved Fazioli – sounds disembodied, unengaged with the orchestra (and aren’t people who spurn Steinways a bit like those who spurn Microsoft?). Nevertheless, I’d place Andsnes’s acuity and Shelley’s fantasy far above Hewitt’s stolidity in the Concerto and opt, despite less fine engineering and accompaniment, for Uhlig in the shorter works.