All the elements for a great recording are present here. Each of the three works is a masterpiece by one of the great composers of the 20th century. Each exploits the potential of a virtuoso string orchestra, and each includes brilliant solo- as well as ensemble-writing. Gordan Nikoli?, violin virtuoso and conductor, and the excellent Netherlands Chamber Orchestra are powerful interpreters of these scores, and PentaTone has delivered their performances in rich, resonant, and, where appropriate, biting surround sound. Thanks to the two-channel layer on the disc, those with conventional CD players can also find sound and performances of the highest quality.

All three composers were working under the gathering shadows of the century’s greatest catastrophe. Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), the youngest of this trio, composed his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge in 1937, in time for its performance by the Boyd Neel String Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival. As Austria had not yet fallen to the Nazis, there is no political significance to this; Bela Bartók (1881–1945) composed his Divertimento on commission from the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher in the summer of 1939. This also was free of political inspiration; yet both Britten and Bartók would soon sail to the United States, escaping a Europe suddenly torn by war. By contrast, Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1962) had withdrawn from the musical life of Germany after the Nazis took power in 1933. He sent his haunting Concerto funèbre for solo violin and string orchestra (1939) abroad, as a musical protest against the cynical division of Czechoslovakia accomplished in Munich, his hometown, in 1938.

Britten’s masterpiece shows amazing skill and originality in orchestration. His variations encompass several styles and periods of music, but each also is charged with original musical thought and observation—there is no mere imitation here. One becomes aware of a certain debt to Stravinsky, but perhaps most of all to Frank Bridge himself, a complex and gifted composer and teacher. Bartók’s piece is considerably more profound and complex than the name divertimento implies. The outer movements both begin in a folksy, cheerful way, but both contain more serious passages, unexpected dynamic shifts, and moments of considerable profundity. The Adagio begins in a veiled, mysterious fashion, and goes on to be an altogether serious and perhaps tragic statement. One might more properly think of this work as Bartók’s Concerto for String Orchestra. Finally, Hartmann’s work is written in (for him) a rather conservative musical language, while remaining uniquely original in its effect. The composer’s penchant for atonal or trans-tonal composition is present, if at all, in the angry third movement. But even there, firm tonal foundations are almost always evident. The brief introduction, the following Adagio, and the final Chorale/Slow March are deeply sorrowful, but also quite lovely, and the music ends with a full chord in D Major, as if to say that truth and beauty, however derailed in the turmoil of the time, would someday prevail.

Robert McColley, FANFARE

There is a new recording of Mozart opus KV 551 and KV 543! Some reviewers shake their heads. "Yet another one!". Fortunately, these two are so devilishly good that centuries after their creation they still knock people who have an antenna for it off their feet. Wait a minute, antennas, did they exist back then? Silly? Yeah, silly. Who would say that Mozart wasn't occasionally silly? And bold, cheeky! The way he throws down the last movement of the Jupiter symphony like a gauntlet at the feet of his contemporaries is inimitable. Unfortunately, you can't see it on this album when the bassoons and cellos laugh up their sleeves, but you can hear it all the better. What contrasts! After the bright beginning with timpani and trumpets, the second movement comes from a completely different world. "Con sordino", seductively and gently Gordan Nikolic and the girls and guys of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra caress the ears. And so it goes on and on. Same with the E flat major symphony. Yes, but aren't there already many wonderful recordings of these works? Yes there are. But as is the case with Mozart, the most famous interpreters can fail and the least known can hit the mark. Decide yourself.

It is well-known that musicians very often sit in a circle in Tacet’s recordings. With this layout, they don't just hear each other, they can also see each other. This means that the musical exchanges between the musicians are simpler and better. And it is easier to achieve a natural-sounding recording, not only in Tacet Real SS but also in stereo. But is it even possible for an orchestral recording? And without a conductor? We were intrigued by the question and so decided to pursue it. The answer? It does indeed work - in fact very well! At the very least, a layout like this expresses the equality of all the participants. The Netherlands Chamber Orchestra puts down a spicy performance of two of Mozart's bubbliest symphonies: the "Prague" and the "Linz". The musicians of the NPhO and to Gordan Nikolic took on this successful venture with great enthusiasm, and the result pays dividends!

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

MOZART Piano Concertos Nos. 15 and 27 • Martin Helmchen (pn); Gordon Nikoli?, cond; Netherlands CO • PENTATONE 5186508 (SACD: 55:27)


Exactly one year ago, in issue 36:5, I expressed only lukewarm enthusiasm for Martin Helmchen’s solo Schumann disc. I’d not heard (and still haven’t) the pianist’s debut album of Mozart concertos (Nos. 13 and 24), which was received very positively by Steven Ritter, and recommended unreservedly by him in 31:4. With this latest release in Helmchen’s expanding discography, I now have the chance to hear him in two other Mozart concertos, Nos. 15 and 27, both in B? Major.


These two scores, programmed on the same disc, make for an interesting pair of bookends, and not just because they’re both in the same key. The B?-Major Concerto No. 27, K 595—as far as we know, and at least as far as the numbering goes—is Mozart’s last piano concerto. The date on the manuscript, “5 January, 1791,” until fairly recent times, was, accepted as the work’s date of composition. But a close examination of the paper has established an earlier date, no later than 1789 and perhaps as early as 1787. This uncertainty is reflected in the Chronological-Thematic Catalog of the Complete Works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , published in 1964, in which the date of the concerto is given as “?1788–1791, Jan. 5, 1791.” If, in fact, the piece was composed in 1788, it might actually predate the “Coronation” Concerto (No. 26), which would make No. 27 Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto instead of his last one.


About the dating of the other B?-Major Concerto on the disc (No. 15), there is no such uncertainty; it’s dated March 15, 1784; but what makes this score the left-hand bookend in this pairing of works is that it marks the beginning of the series of concertos to which Mozart applied the term “grand.” Presumably, this was “Mozart-speak” for the inclusion of additional instruments in the woodwind section and for their expanded role in the orchestra.


It would be inaccurate to say that Mozart never called for a flute before No. 15; he scored for two of them in his G-Major Concerto (No. 4), K 41, and again in his B?-Major Concerto (No. 6), K 238, something he never did again. Both of those concertos, however, are very sparsely orchestrated, with only two horns plus strings joining the flutes in the former, and two oboes, two horns, and strings joining the flutes in the latter. After that, there are no flutes again until the present Concerto No. 15, and then, only one of them. Indeed, none of the piano concertos going forward ever calls for more than a single flute.


It would also be inaccurate to say that Mozart’s concerto scoring follows a straight line of increasing numbers of instruments. The Concerto No. 13, for example, calls for an orchestra larger than that of No. 15, with two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. No. 15 uses no oboes, no trumpets, and no timpani. Mozart’s “grandest” concerto of all in terms of scoring is No. 24, the “everything bagel”: flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. No other Mozart concerto is as heavily scored. In fact, No. 27, presumably his last piano concerto, is almost regressive as far as its instrumentation is concerned: flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings. From this, I think we can safely say that Mozart was highly sensitive to orchestration; that he didn’t pursue a progressive course of enlarging his orchestra, but rather scored according to what he perceived to be the character of the music.


It is accurate to say, however, that beginning with No. 15 a flute appears in every one of the remaining concertos, as do two bassoons and two horns. Clarinets don’t make their first appearance until No. 22, and are then found only twice again, in Nos. 23 and 24. From No. 16 onward, all but Nos. 22 and 23 use two oboes; and trumpets, always paired with timpani, show up in seven of the concertos, beginning with No. 16.


Based on the foregoing, one could posit that No. 15 is either the last of Mozart’s early piano concertos or the first of his late ones, which is why I characterized it as the left-hand bookend to the right-hand one, No. 27.


Martin Helmchen definitely displays an intuitive feel for Mozart I didn’t sense in his Schumann. The composer himself, in a letter to his father, declared his B? Concerto, K 450, to be the most technically difficult he’d written to date, “a concerto to make one sweat,” he wrote. I don’t smell a drop of perspiration in Helmchen’s performance; his runs sound easily even, with every note perfectly weighted and given its due, while his chords, like punchy punctuation marks, articulate phrases and demarcate musical periods with a stride of confidence and authority.


If No. 15 represents the 28-year-old Mozart demonstrating a newfound concerto-writing assurance on two levels—one of demanding greater keyboard virtuosity and the other of endowing the woodwind instruments with an indispensable independence—No. 27 is about something else. One doesn’t usually speak of Mozart’s late works, as one does of Brahms’s, as being autumnal. At 35, Mozart was, after all, still a young man, and probably had no intuition of his rapidly approaching premature demise. Yet, this last piano concerto has about it a breadth and certain mellowness that have something in common with the yet-to-come Clarinet Concerto.


As Ronald Vermeulen’s album note puts it, “The [first] movement’s atmosphere—and for that matter, that of the entire work—is for the most part serene and lyrical, introverted and melancholy.” And later, Vermeulen quotes musicologist and pianist Charles Rosen, who wrote, both the last piano concerto and the Clarinet Concerto are private statements: “The form is never exploited for exterior effect; the tone is always one of intimacy.”


Unlike No. 15, No. 27 is not a concerto for “show,” and Helmchen’s whole demeanor at the keyboard changes to one of poignant tenderness for one of the most sensitive and touching performances of this work I’ve heard.


Mozart provided his own cadenzas for both these concertos, and Helmchen, thankfully, plays them. I say this with a sense of relief, for there have been some real “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” cadenzas written for Mozart’s concertos, like the one Fauré composed for the C-Minor Concerto (No. 24), and which Vassily Primakov imprudently chose for his recording with Simon Gaudenz and the Odense Symphony Orchestra on Bridge.


It wouldn’t be right to conclude this review without mentioning the beautiful contributions in orchestral playing offered by the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra led by Gordan Nikoli?, and the gorgeous multichannel sound offered by PentaTone’s SACD recording. There are many wonderful recordings of Mozart’s concertos to choose from—personal favorites include those by Murray Perahia, Robert Casadesus, Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, Christian Zacharias, and Matthias Kirschnereit—but Martin Helmchen easily earns a highly valued place among them. Very strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.