Beethoven Piano Concertos

excellent in performance, sound and video
This proves to be a worthwhile companion bluray disc to the recent outstanding Thielemann Beethoven symphony set. (see my review.)I am not usually a big fan of combination pianist/conductor set-ups, but in this repertoire, I much prefer this version to the Barenboim set, good as it is.

Buchbinder plays with a much lighter touch than Barenboim, and seems more whimsical.The tempi are considerably quicker. Plus you don't have to watch Barenboim mopping up his perspiration every few bars! I really enjoyed #'s 1 & 3 here more than I usually do, due to his playing sensibilities. I've always been fond of #'s 2 & 5, but I still don't love #4. Buchbinder plays and conducts without a score, a sign of his knowing these concerti inside out. (I'm always skeptical of pianists that need a score in performance.) There just seems to be so much joy in his playing, and this infectiousness is evident in the orchestra members as well.

What can you say about the Vienna Phil. and...

Superior
This blu-Ray recording of the Beethoven piano concertos is a winner. Excellent interpretations of both piano and orchestra, and both of them are conducted such as to compliment with each other beautifully. Buchbinder was perhaps a bit too spritely when he played the piano for his previous Mozart piano concertos on DVD, but here his performance of the piano parts of beethoven's concertos are superiorly well nuanced. The Steinway he was playing on also gave out rich bass sounds, which are crucial for bringing out the atmosphere of the third movement of the fifth concerto.

Particularly well done was the first movement of the fourth piano concerto, which is perhaps the most difficult of all of beethoven's piano concertos for which to play the piano part with balanced nuances and also to complimentarily blend both piano and orchestra parts together. This movement is fiendishly subtle and is very easy to perform with imperfections of interpretive balance! But here this...

A real alternative to the smaller scaled but more dramatic Barenboim set
The predominant impression gained when experiencing this set of performances by Buchbinder is that of affection. This is apparent in every note or phrase that is played, by his interaction with members of the orchestra and also in his whole stage manner which is immensely genial and likeable.

What about the musical detail? Buchbinder has made an incredibly thorough study of these concertos as he explains in the fascinating bonus documentary. This has led him to collect considerable numbers of editions of all of these works including the first editions in Beethoven's own hand. In doing this he has found numerous discrepancies between editions, even in first editions following on from Beethoven's original manuscripts.

Essentially these editorial discrepancies have frequently deleted many of Beethoven's instructions concerning phrasing, tempi changes and dynamics. Those instructions amount to subtleties of expression which imply more freedom than that allowed by a...

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