Our Summer BAL No 56 Beethoven Piano Concerto No4

[Barbirollians]

What they have against these concertos at BAL I cannot imagine - The Piano Concerto No3 appeared in 2005 and none of the others are recorded on Presto's site for a BAL .

So many great performances on record but if you forced me to choose one it would be the very first I owned - Perahia/Haitink on Sony - the finale is so joyful and the slow movement truly Orpheus taming those beasts .

What would be your library choice ?

[pastoralguy]

What they have against these concertos at BAL I cannot imagine - The Piano Concerto No3 appeared in 2005 and none of the others are recorded on Presto's site for a BAL .

So many great performances on record but if you forced me to choose one it would be the very first I owned - Perahia/Haitink on Sony - the finale is so joyful and the slow movement truly Orpheus taming those beasts .

What would be your library choice ?

One of the first CDs I ever bought.

[pastoralguy]

How about John Lill with Sir Alexander Gibson conducting the SNO circa 1975?

[Barbirollians]

How about John Lill with Sir Alexander Gibson conducting the SNO circa 1975?

I like the Lill recordings - slow burners I think but not quite up there with Perahia, Solomon , Kovacevich, Pires and Haskil for me.

[Bryn]

Brautigam, whether on Steinway (using Barry Cooper's edition of Beethoven's revisions) or fortepiano (with Charles Hazlewood conducting) is worthy of consideration. Love the Schoonderwoerd/Cristofori though.

[jayne lee wilson]

That BIS recording of Brautigam/Norrköping/Parrott is so wonderful to me, I bought CD and 24-bit download. Another great admirer of ("say it with me" ) Schoonderwoerd/Cristofori too.
With les orchestres modernes, I enjoy the Bronfman/Tonhalle Zurich/Zinman set very much as well...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My favourite of the Beethoven Piano Concertos - and very probably of all Piano Concertos. I'd want many, many recordings (Perahia, Brendel/Haitink, Kovacevich, Brautigam, van Immerseel); but if I had to have only one, then the Kempff/BPO/Leitner would be my choice. It's very fine as a performance and recording, and it also has nostalgic significance - very shortly after I'd heard the piece for the first time ever (at a Hallé concert in Blackburn, conducted by Loughran with IIRC Imogen Cooper) I found the LP mispriced in a record shop so I could actually afford it with my £1 pocket money. I had the LP for nearly twenty years, by which time I'd practically worn it out.

[cloughie]

Yes a lovely concerto, many good recordings - from early doors I liked Katchen/Gamba and Gilels/Ludwig, either of the Kempff and Pollini/Bohm.

[Zucchini]

Pires, Grimaud, Fleisher

[Alain Maréchal]

A tough choice.

Gilels c.Szell. or Gilels c. Ludwig? Certainly one or the other.

[BBMmk2]

I didn't like the Perhahia/Haitink. It was the sound that put me off. Ore re ently the cycle I do like is the Paul Lewis/BBCSO/Behlohlavek. So this includes No.4

[kea]

I like all of the performances I've heard, which are:

Rubinstein & Krips
Grimaud & someone
Bronfman & Zinman
Tan & Norrington
Levin & Gardiner
Immerseel & Weil
Serkin & Ormandy

For whatever reason though, it's the last one I listen to most often, by a fair margin. At his best Serkin the elder's interpretations of Beethoven hit the "sweet spot". (Serkin the younger is no slouch... no Concerto 4 recording though)

One thing I want to hear is a performance that uses Nikolay Medtner's cadenzas, because they are small masterpieces of the genre. Good cadenzas are harder to write than one might think at first....

[Stanfordian]

I like all of the performances I've heard, which are:

Rubinstein & Krips
Grimaud & someone
Bronfman & Zinman
Tan & Norrington
Levin & Gardiner
Immerseel & Weil
Serkin & Ormandy

For whatever reason though, it's the last one I listen to most often, by a fair margin. At his best Serkin the elder's interpretations of Beethoven hit the "sweet spot". (Serkin the younger is no slouch... no Concerto 4 recording though)

One thing I want to hear is a performance that uses Nikolay Medtner's cadenzas, because they are small masterpieces of the genre. Good cadenzas are harder to write than one might think at first....

Such a masterwork of the repertoire! My recommended accounts are Wilhelm Kempff/Ferdinand Leitner and Emil Gilels/George Szell. Strangely I've never warmed to Stephen Kovacevich, Alfred Brendel or more recently Paul Lewis in the Beethoven concertos.

[rauschwerk]

Looking for a modern version of the Emperor a few years ago to supplement my much loved mono Kempff recording, I chose Till Fellner/Montreal SO/Nagano and was not in the least disappointed. No 4 is equally fine and, listening with a score just now, I really could make no adverse criticism to speak of. The balance (as far as I can tell with my ageing ears) is just about ideal, too. Sometime I think that recordings not forming part of a cycle (like this one) are unjustly neglected.

I used to own an LP of Kempff/Leitner. Kempff plays his own cadenzas, and I remember feeling that in the finale, where Beethoven asks for a short cadenza, Kempff goes on a bit too long. But of course that's a matter of taste!

[AmpH]

Both Kempff recordings on DG and Sir Colin's recording with Stephen Kovacevich on Philips have generally been my reference points for this work. More recently I have thoroughly enjoyed the recording of Maria Joao Pires with the Swedish RSO under Daniel Harding on Onyx and even more so Yevgeny Sudbin with the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vanska c/w an equally fine Emperor - Sudbin plays with a lighter touch at times than many, which I find refreshing - all aided by the customary excellent BIS sonics.