Lars Vogt: 8 September 1970 - 5 September 2022

This new release is pianist-conductor Lars Vogt’s debut album together with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris. Lars Vogt started his tenure as the new Music Director of the orchestra on 1 July 2020. This album release continues Lars Vogt’s discography of recordings of cornerstone works within the classic piano concerto literature conducting from the keyboard. Previous album releases include the complete piano concertos of Beethoven and Brahms with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. In 2021, Lars Vogt won the OPUS Klassik award for the best solo piano album release of year from his recent Janácek solo album release (ODE 1382-2).

REVIEWS:

Lars Vogt’s dazzling playing on this new recording does [the concertos] full justice…this newcomer is very impressive and benefits greatly from the fine playing of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris.

--BBC Music Magazine

German pianist Lars Vogt has been music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia since 2015, and the recordings where he conducts from the keyboard have been markedly successful, including a complete Beethoven concerto cycle and (more daringly) the two Brahms piano concertos.

Vogt deserves praise for the crisp, precise, and buoyant accompaniments he evokes here from the Orchestre de chambre de Paris. These are vigorous, animated readings that take best advantage of the brilliant fast music in the outer movements, particularly the rocket that takes off at the start of Concerto No. 1. He made me appreciate the slow movements in both concertos, which doesn’t happen often, and the orchestral part is played with real warmth. Also, Ondine’s recorded sound is lovely, capturing piano and orchestra in perfect balance.

What I’ll return to are the two piano concertos, in which Vogt’s performances are as fine as any I’ve heard in years. Warmly recommended.

--Fanfare

Mendelssohn’s piano concertos are rather rarely played. Lars Vogt has recorded two of them together with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, of which he is the Music Director.

He and his orchestra play the Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with a great deal of impetus, unaffected, fresh, and very colorful. Vogt has the necessary polish and pulsating agility for these movements. The slower passages are interpreted sensitively, nuanced, poetic, but by no means too emotional. The overall result is a joyful and thrilling performance that can only be warmly welcomed and recommended. The well-balanced orchestra, playing with a fresh sound, is an excellent partner for Vogt, sworn to his conducting and soloistic rhetoric.

The Capriccio brilliant, however, leaves the most lasting impression. Lars Vogt plays it not only energetically, but with jubilant enthusiasm, and he transfers this enthusiasm to the musicians of the Paris Chamber Orchestra, who play with great spontaneity.

It is important to note that Vogt does not work according to the principle of ‘fast and loud’, but combines his energy with a fine feeling for the musicality of the works. The result is fascinating.

--Pizzicato

Mendelssohn performed by a chamber orchestra and directed from the keyboard always looks like an enticing proposition. And so it proves with this new set from the Paris Chamber Orchestra with Lars Vogt at the helm.

There’s a wonderfully Beethovenian flair to the First Concerto’s opening movement, but equally striking is the musicians’ way with more lyrical moments. And, as you might expect from such a first-class chamber musician, he gives as much attention to places where the piano accompanies as he does when he’s center stage. Crucially, the orchestra respond in kind, matching the soloist’s articulation and dynamics to an unusual degree. There’s plenty of fantasy too – in the piano passages Mendelssohn writes to link the first and second movements of each concerto, for instance, which unfurl with a naturalness reminiscent of Murray Perahia.

The Presto finales are imbued with terrific energy but never become merely note-fests – the level of detail remains impressive.

The album is filled out by the Capriccio brillant, Op 22, and what can be mere froth in unimaginative hands is wonderfully characterful here, the mock military march given a jokey swagger, with nicely present timpani and brass. In the final a tempo, with its mad running dash of semiquavers, Vogt is impressively unfazed and dazzlingly understated. The recording is excellent too, with a vividness that brings these master musicians right into your sitting room.

--Gramophone