Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vols. 8 & 9

 

KEYBOARD MUSIC VOLS. 8 & 9

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 7

 

KEYBOARD MUSIC VOL. 7

 

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vols. 5 & 6

 

KEYBOARD MUSIC VOLS. 5 & 6

 

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 4

 

KEYBOARD MUSIC VOL. 4

 

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 3

 

KEYBOARD MUSIC VOL. 3

 

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 2

 

KEYBOARD MUSIC VOL. 2

 

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 1

 

KEYBOARD MUSIC VOL. 1

 

Kristian Bezuidenhout / Freiburger Barockorchester / Pablo Heras-Casado BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4

PIANO CONCERTO No. 4

Kristian Bezuidenhout / Pablo Heras-Casado / Freiburger Barockochester BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 5 "Emperor"

                                                   PIANO CONCERTOS NOS. 2 & 5

Kristian Bezuidenhout / Pablo Heras-Casado / Freiburger Barockorchester MENDELSSOHN Piano Concerto No.2 - Symphony No. 1

Mendelssohn’s first symphonic work scored for full orchestra, the Symphony op. 11 in C minor paved the way for even greater examples of the genre he was soon to produce. The concert overture Die schöne Melusine and the sparkling Piano Concerto No. 2 rely on the type of orchestration and harmonic language which are best served when played on period instruments, as heard here. Devoid of the atmosphere of Romantic doom and gloom, nearly every page of both scores is marked by an exuberant cheerfulness, youthful drive, and irrepressible energy.

Kristian Bezuidenhout JOSEPH HAYDN Piano Sonatas Hob. XVI:6, 20 & 48

A few years after a complete recording of Mozart's solo piano works that has gradually come to be regarded as a benchmark, Kristian Bezuidenhout has taken all the time he needed to tackle Haydn, the other towering figure of the Viennese Classical keyboard repertory: 'Preparing for this recording has been a vivid reminder that it is remarkably difficult to play Haydn's music well, but that with enough care, and attention to detail, his music has the potential to come jumping from the page. It would be hubris to suggest that I am even close to unlocking any of its secrets, but I am so humbled by the sheer beauty, humanity, wit and delightful irony of this music, that the desire to continue is irresistible.'

Mark Padmore / Kristian Bezuidenhout SCHUBERT Winterreise

Only a few months after Florian Boesch’s second recording of Schubert’s great wintry song-cycle (Hyperion, A/17), here’s a second bite at the bitter cherry from another singer, albeit a very different one. With Mark Padmore at least there’s been a longer intervening period: it’s nine years since the release of his previous Winterreise, a 2010 Gramophone Award-winner, also on Harmonia Mundi. And there’s a major difference here, too, in that not only is Paul Lewis replaced by Kristian Bezuidenhout but a modern concert grand is switched for a Graf fortepiano.

As with the earlier recording, there’s a wealth of interest to be found at the keyboard. Here the instrument itself is beautifully mellow, with an especially tender con sordini sound as well as some brightness in the tone when required – not often, admittedly, in this most subdued of cycles. I love the hazy twang Bezuidenhout produces at the start of ‘Der Lindenbaum’, the wild clanging of the ‘Wetterfahne’ and the real sense he gives in ‘Die Krähe’ of the bird swirling ominously about. The melody of ‘Frühlingstraum’ is imbued with so much hope, that of ‘Der Leiermann’ with so little, its opening drone, played much as Lewis plays it, resembling less notes than just a pained, numb sound.

Bezuidenhout spreads his chords occasionally and offers a light sprinkling of ornaments, as does Padmore. And in the later stages of the cycle, in particular, the tenor offers singing of remarkable patience, control and concentration (listen to how he builds up ‘Das Wirtshaus’). The final songs are moving, and Padmore’s intelligence and seriousness are never in doubt, his interpretation always probing.

One notices, however, that the voice has lost some juice: he struggles to offer warmth to counter the blanched tone he employs elsewhere, while the lower register is underpowered. His German, too, is strangely affected, with vowels self-consciously opened up and consonants over-deliberate. The earlier recording, five minutes slower, features many of the same interpretative touches and characteristics, but they are more worrying here, less convincing. Matters are not helped, either, by engineering that places the voice in a strange quasi-ecclesiastical halo.

Padmore’s fans will no doubt snap his new recording up, but I’d otherwise recommend sticking with the earlier one, featuring Lewis’s warm, deeply human contribution at the keyboard. And if fortepiano’s what you need, head to Christoph Prégardien and Andreas Staier for something altogether more grounded, satisfying and idiomatic. (Hugo Shirley / Gramophone)

Isabelle Faust / Kristian Bezuidenhout J.S. BACH Sonatas for Violin & Harpsichord

"Isabelle Faust has never cultivated the whale-boned red-carpet glamour that many female soloists feel obliged to pursue. On stage and off, the German violinist's manner is relaxed, her style understated. She sports a gamine, Jeanne d'Arc crop and, save for the tell-tale violinist's love-bite just below her jaw, you might guess her to be an architect or an academic. In a way, she is both, for an appreciation of musical structure and an interest in historical research are integral to her work.

The stillness of focus and purity of sound that has distinguished her playing can be heard in a repertoire stretching from Beethoven and Schubert through to Hartmann and Ligeti, on modern and period strings. Where other violinists dazzle, Faust is a thinker. On the subject of her own individual sound, she is hesitant: "Of course, I'm trying to be me in whatever repertoire I'm playing, and I do think that my work is different from that of other violinists – but actually I'm never really trying to keep to this idea of an individual sound. It's always my goal to get a different interpretation and also a different kind of voice particular to the voice of the composer." (Anna Picard / The Guardian)

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 1

South African-British historical keyboardist Kristian Bezuidenhout has emerged from accompanimental roles into solo concertizing and major-label recording, making quite a splash. The immediate attraction is his tone. Through frequent and varied use of the una corda pedal (the "soft pedal" of the modern piano), he coaxes a large range of dynamics and timbres out of his instrument, a modern copy of a 1795 Viennese Walter fortepiano. It may be easier with Bezuidenhout than with any of his peers to forget that you're listening to a historical instrument. And in this very nicely recorded selection of Mozart sonatas and other pieces, he often matches the instrument to the music in an admirably thorough way. The high point is the big Piano Sonata in F major, K. 533, an incomplete work joined as is usually done with the Rondo in F major, K. 494, to make a three-movement sonata. Bezuidenhout effectively draws out the contrasts in the first movement of this complex work, modulating the tone of his piano as the first movement moves from intellectual arcana (the Alberti bass of the opening suddenly being deployed as the top line of invertible counterpoint) to muscular crowd-pleasing arpeggios. The sparser late Piano Sonata in B flat major, K. 570, also receives a convincing, rather brooding performance. Elsewhere, Bezuidenhout is more idiosyncratic. He splits off the Fantasia in C minor, K. 475, from the Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457, to which it is usually attached, and both there and in the innocent Variations on "Unser dummer Pöbel meint," K. 455, the interpretations seem a bit overwrought. Still, there's a good deal of pleasure in the sheer lushness of this album, which marks another step in bringing the fortepiano into the musical mainstream. (James Manheim)

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 2

South African-born keyboardist Kristian Bezuidenhout seems to search for a middle ground between those who treat the fortepiano as a kind of modified harpsichord and those who stress the ways its percussive potential can highlight the incipient Romantic qualities in music of the late 18th century. On this collection of Mozart piano works, he makes full use of the potential of his instrument, a copy by American-Czech builder Paul McNulty of an 1802 Viennese instrument by Anton Walter, often deploying the pedals to develop a range of sounds that take on added color from the unequal-temperament tuning. Yet his basic mode of playing is not terribly expressive. The combination works well in the muscular works that bookend the album, with the lower ranges of the McNulty fortepiano bringing out the full Beethovenian power of the Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457 (played, unusually, without its introductory Fantasia in C minor, K. 475), and of the rather symphonic Piano Sonata in C major, K. 330. The smaller pieces at the center of the program suffer a bit from the relatively inflexible melodic idiom. To give great pathos to the bleak Rondo in A minor, K. 511, and Adagio in B minor, K. 540, may be to rely too much on knowledge of what was coming next stylistically, but the Adagio is taken at something more than the designated clip, and there's room for more emotion here than Bezuidenhout allows. Some variation is justifiable in repeats, but Bezuidenhout pushes the envelope; the flourish in the exposition repeat of the Adagio in B minor seems at odds with the exhausted, enervated quality of the music. The main attraction here may be the fortepiano itself, with its strong, clear tone; it begins to approach a grand in power, but the colors are different. Harmonia Mundi's studio sound is excellent and fully attuned to Bezuidenhout's rereading of the big sonatas. Notes are in English, French, and German. (James Manheim)

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 3

The influence of the early music movement on the performance of Mozart's keyboard music has reached a point where the listener can choose from among several strong fortepiano versions of most works. There are the compellingly dramatic, somewhat abrupt readings by Andreas Staier, the expressively melodic recordings of Ronald Brautigam, the clean, classical treatments of Malcolm Bilson, and now a cycle by South African-British fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout on the Harmonia Mundi label, which in classical terms is a major label. Bezuidenhout's instrument, a copy of a 1795 Walter fortepiano by American-Czech builder Paul McNulty (tuned in unequal temperament), is a star of the show here; for sheer fluidity and power it's probably unequaled on the historical-performance scene. The program displays it effectively here, making this a good introduction for those who want to sample Bezuidenhout's style. The Piano Sonata in B flat major, K. 333, is one of those Mozart sonatas that's virtually a concerto in miniature, with powerful bass lines and a little cadenza written into the end of the finale. It's the perfect showpiece for the McNulty/Walter instrument, and a very satisfying performance. After that you get the inexplicably rarely played Variations in F major on "Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding," K. 613, a late work that seems to twit the operatic melody in which it's based by retaining the simple tune at the beginning of each variation but then plunging unexpectedly into complex textures or harmonic twists. Bezuidenhout does not quite put the humor across here, but he's back on comfortable ground with the incomplete Fantasia in C minor, K. 396, and Piano Sonata in F major, K. 332. Very well recorded, as usual with Harmonia Mundi, this is as good a place as any to start with Bezuidenhout's series. (James Manheim)

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 4

Listeners can choose from among a number of historical-instrument performances of Mozart's keyboard works. There are the compelling irregular, somewhat abrupt versions by Andreas Staier, the expressive readings of Ronald Brautigam, the clean-lined treatments of Malcolm Bilson, and now a cycle by South African-British fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout on the Harmonia Mundi label. Bezuidenhout is a somewhat experimental player, and his ideas (as in his bizarre concerto readings) can backfire. But one of the strengths of his series has been his choices among fortepianos built by American-Czech maker Paul McNulty, copying instruments by Viennese builder Anton Walter of Mozart's and Beethoven's time. Here he uses a copy of an 1805 Walter instrument, a real powerhouse that's a couple of decades too late for much of the music. But it works, for these are for the most part big works in which Mozart was exploiting every bit of the new instrument's capabilities; Bezuidenhout's slight exaggeration of pianistic effects allows him, as it were, to bring out Mozart's excitement at discovering these capabilities. The two minor-key fantasies and the Prelude and Fugue in C major, K. 394, are presented here in muscular, intense readings that work very well. Even better are the 12 Variations on "Je suis Lindor" in B flat major, K. 354, which can be a very tricky work to bring beyond the mundane. In Bezuidenhout's hands it's a sonic adventure. It might be argued that, composed in the year 1778, these variations are close to the dividing line between fortepiano and harpsichord, but Bezuidenhout certainly makes a strong case for them as piano works, and a work written for his own virtuoso use in Paris would likely have been conceived with the latest technology in mind. The location of the recording by Harmonia Mundi USA is not specified, but it is quite fine: the inner workings of the fortepiano are heard but not fetishized. (James Manheim)

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vols. 5 & 6

Mozart’s solo keyboard music inhabits a somewhat isolated corner. Great Mozartians from Clifford Curzon to Alfred Brendel to Clara Haskil left surprisingly few recordings of the solo sonatas and variations, which is why Kristian Bezuidenhout’s mandate to record all of them on fortepiano for Harmonia Mundi catches the attention. Hearing the discs themselves, one can hardly take one’s ears off the performances because they go so far inside the music and reverse much of what you thought you knew.

Bezuidenhout seems to piggyback lesser works (variations) on to major ones (sonatas) by juxtaposing them together, paired according to similar chronology, revealing moments of synchronicity as well as dramatic leaps in Mozart’s evolution, such as on Vol 7 when the 1773 Six Variations on ‘Mio caro Adone’ in G major, K180, are followed, in 1774, by the gargantuan theme-and-variations final movement of the Piano Sonata in D major, K284, showing Mozart working with an invention and rigour that almost sound like another composer. Elsewhere, though, Mozart’s freewheeling variations, at least in these performances, are doorways into the composer’s psyche in ways that the more formal, polished sonatas are not. The variations were like Mozart’s secret garden, offering glimpses of his improvisatory spirit. Dare I say that Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations came to mind repeatedly in these three volumes?

‘When Mozart played a simple scale,’ wrote Wanda Landowska, quoting the composer’s contemporaries, ‘it became transformed into a cavatina.’ That sums up the Bezuidenhout difference. His typical Mozartian attributes include firm command of structure, great instincts for sympathetic tempi and a technique refined enough to get at the tiniest details – in contrast to Paul Badura-Skoda’s more forceful but generalised fortepiano sonorities (Gramola). More distinctively, Bezuidenhout’s elastic tempi give him room to probe for meaning but also allow panache that’s so much a part of Mozart’s buoyant temperament and prompts some delightfully elongated final cadences. Not only does one hear the notes with more transparency than on a modern instrument but one also gets a stronger sense of Mozart’s larger world. Bezuidenhout’s stealth weapon, though, may be the unequal temperament of his copy of an 1805 Anton Walter instrument. The popular notion that equal temperament reigned exclusively after JS Bach just isn’t true. Experiments with alternative tuning – I’m thinking of Peter Serkin playing late Beethoven – can be colouristic revelations, which is also true of Bezuidenhout. So if you can only afford one volume of this series, which would it be? I refuse to say. Hear them all. (Gramophone)

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vol. 7

The cycle of Mozart's complete keyboard music by Kristian Bezuidenhout has gained plenty of notice for its sheer originality and energy, including some from U.S. Grammy nominators at the end of 2015 for this volume. It's one of the best of the Bezuidenhout cycle, using the fortepianist's copy of an 1805 Anton Walter instrument (by the great American-Czech builder Paul McNulty) to magnificent effect in the almost symphonic Piano Sonata in D major, K. 284. In that work, taking all the repeats in the finale and introducing substantial tempo rubato in the repeats, Bezuidenhout gives the work an epic quality. But he does this with all of Mozart's variation sets, including the small one recorded here at the beginning. The Piano Sonata in A minor, K. 310, with its slashing accents and tense atmosphere, takes on a Beethovenian quality. Bezuidenhout in general emphasizes the experimental, proto-Romantic side of Mozart's musical personality and greatly minimizes the graceful Classical (and French) side. Whether you accept this may be a matter of taste, but it works exceptionally well in the two sonatas here, masterpieces of Mozart's middle period in Bezuidenhout's hands. Highly recommended. (James Manheim)

Kristian Bezuidenhout MOZART Keyboard Music Vols. 8 & 9

Kristian Bezuidenhout's cycle of Mozart's complete keyboard music concludes with this double album, which contains some real rarities that are ideally suited to Bezuidenhout's tough, wiry style. As such, it may not be the item to pick if you want to sample the series, but it's often fascinating. Bezuidenhout's basic modus operandi is to give considerable weight even to works conventionally thought of as light, using his powerful fortepiano (a copy of an 1805 Walter instrument by builder Paul McNulty) and its unequal-temperament tuning to bring out dissonances and sinewy lines rarely heard elsewhere. Here he has some really radical experiments to work with, and even if you find Bezuidenhout's readings idiosyncratic at times, you'll likely appreciate the likes of the Modulating Prelude F-C, K. deest (it is indubitably by Mozart), or the Menuetto in D major, K. 355, with its daring harmonies barely matched elsewhere in Mozart's output. Several of the sonata-form movements were abandoned by Mozart for one reason or another and have been completed by Mozart scholar Robert Levin; the joints are hard to hear. Some pieces, such as the Modulating Prelude and the Four Preludes, K. 284a, are examples of Mozart's improvisational abilities, which were rarely captured in notation. In the larger and more usual works, Bezuidenhout applies a heavy touch to the Piano Sonatas K. 279 and 280, and to three large variations sets, which are generally given a touch of French elegance. But in the Nine Variations on a Minuet by Duport, K. 573, Bezuidenhout achieves utterly distinctive results in a work that has almost no harmonic content and is completely about register and space. Bezuidenhout's Mozart is, to be sure, a matter of taste, but this is a fine conclusion to his series. (James Manheim)