Following the success of his previous Orchid Classics albums, Stewart Goodyear returns with his spirited, insightful interpretation of the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos, recorded with Andrew Constantine conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for a release that coincides with Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year.

Goodyear made his Orchid debut with an album of Ravel’s solo piano music, hailed as “a major achievement” (Classics Today). More recently, his sensational album with Chineke! Orchestra and Wayne Marshall featured Goodyear’s own music alongside Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the performance of which earned 5 stars in BBC Music Magazine. Now, Goodyear returns with perhaps his most ambitious recording yet: the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos. There is the Haydnesque wit of the Piano Concerto No.1, with its exquisite Largo; a pared-down, Mozartian orchestra for the Concerto No.2 with its playful ‘Turkish’ finale; and in the Concerto No.3, premiered alongside the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven establishes a new intimacy between soloist and orchestra. This relationship reaches new depths in the intricately-linked Piano Concerto No.4, and the set culminates in the majestic ‘Emperor’ Concerto, No.5.

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REVIEWS:

The intelligent virtuosity and stylish affinity distinguishing Stewart Goodyear’s Beethoven piano sonata cycle make themselves felt throughout these accounts of the composer’s five piano concertos. In addition to the sheer joy and exuberance Goodyear displays in the first two concertos’ outer movements, the pianist’s specificity insofar as Beethoven’s phrasing, accents, and subito dynamics are concerned enhance the music’s dramatic profile without ever sounding fussy or pedantic: indeed, quite the opposite! Note his uncommon observance of the slurs in the Rondo theme of the First concerto (sound clip), or the appropriately rabble-rousing effect Goodyear creates by emphasizing the syncopated accents in the Second concerto Finale.

The Third concerto’s central Largo sounds slightly faster than it actually is, on account of Goodyear’s tender yet shapely cantabile phrasing. The “Emperor” concerto (No. 5) stands out for the pianist’s angular thrust in the Rondo and the melting legato with which he informs his gorgeous slow movement entrance (shades of the classic Emil Gilels/Leopold Ludwig recording). On initial hearing, the first-movement Allegro seemed a bit square and emphatic, yet the interpretation’s directness grew on me, as also did my appreciation of Goodyear’s forthright mastery of every technical and musical challenge. For example, Goodyear is one of the few pianists who takes trouble contrasting the downward left-hand staccato triplets and the articulation of the right-hand double notes in the sequence beginning at measure 184.

The rapid-fire exchanges between soloist and ensemble in the Fourth concerto’s Rondo convey a genuine chamber-like repartée. While the loud tuttis have plenty of heft and presence, Andrew Constantine obtains a well-balanced and transparent orchestral image from his BBC Wales forces. For all the strings’ impeccable unanimity of execution in the central Andante, the jaunty results run counter to the music’s austere gravitas. My other quibble concerns Constantine’s occasional penchant for exaggerating diminuendos in the orchestral ritornellos, a period performance mannerism that seems to have infected many modern orchestra conductors. Elsewhere, he proves a sympathetic and equal collaborative partner, and pays welcome attention to woodwind parts that often fade into the overall texture.

Goodyear plays the longest of Beethoven’s three First concerto first-movement options, and the more commonly heard Fourth concerto first-movement cadenza featured by pianists such as Artur Schnabel, Leon Fleisher, and Claudio Arrau. In short, the Goodyear/Constantine Beethoven Concerto cycle can hold its own alongside the Bronfman/Zinman and Berezovsky/Dausgaard modern-day reference versions, not to mention older luminaries such as Uchida/Sanderling, Ashkenazy/Solti, Kempff/Leitner, and Fleisher/Szell.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Glorious, life-embracing performances, very well recorded; surely a high point of the composer’s birthday year (or any other, for that matter).

– MusicWeb International (Dan Morgan)