Mitsuko Uchida / Kurt Sanderling BEETHOVEN The 5 Piano Concertos

When does the incandescent become ephemeral? When does the evanescent become artificial? When do the expertly crafted, the gracefully sculpted, and the radiantly beautiful become simply a matter of style and taste? It is impossible to say for certain. For some listeners, Mitsuko Uchida's recordings of Beethoven's piano concertos with Kurt Sanderling conducting either the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra or the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks will be the epitome of aesthetic pleasure. For others, her performances will be instantly forgettable. Uchida certainly has the clear tone, the strong technique, and the necessary heroic-poetic sensibility to play Beethoven's concertos, and Sanderling surely has the depth, the soul, and the experience to conduct Beethoven's concertos, but they don't seem to touch either each other or the music, much less the eternal in Beethoven's music. The witty humor of the First, the easy elegance of the Second, the powerful drama of the Third, the serene lyricism of the Fourth, and the Apollonian majesty of the Fifth seem missing from their performances together, and, although they are pleasant enough while they're playing, when they're over, they're gone and forgotten. Philips' '90s piano sound is as clear, lucid, and warm as its '60s and '70s piano sound, that is to say, as good as the best ever made. (James Leonard)

Viktoria Mullova / Claudio Abbado / Berliner Philharmoniker BRAHMS Violin Concerto

A CD offering less than 40 minutes of music these days is very short measure, but Mullova's is a commanding performance, pure and true throughout, made the more compelling by the spontaneous expressiveness that goes with a live performance. Her admirers need not hesitate, for with one minor reservation the recording is first-rate, and Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic here match the Brahmsian achievement of their DG symphony cycle.
The surprise is that the recording, made at a concert in Japan in January 1992, has taken so long to arrive. Maybe they were waiting for a coupling, but in any case this is a one-off recording, supervised not by Philips's own engineers but by those at NHK, Japan. The reservation I mentioned is that though the sound in generally warm, well-balanced and well-detailed with a pleasant hall-atmosphere, the prominent placing of the timpani means that the many tremolos in the outer movements, notable at first, tend to cloud the texture. The effect is distracting enough to bring home afresh just how many such tremolos there are. Happily, the audience is extremely quiet, except in the brief gap between slow movement and finale.
The first obvious comparison is with Itzhak Perlman's live Berlin recording for EMI with Barenboim conducting this same orchestra. That was made two months after the present one but in the Schauspielhaus, Berlin with a sound-balance typical of Perlman's recordings, with the solo violin in close-up set against full-bodied orchestral sound. The immediate impact of the bravura double-stopping passages is obviously greater, but Mullova consistently compensates in the extra dynamic range that she can convey, with the many reflective passages in the first movement as well as the central Adagio given a rapt intensity. The combination of purity and warmth go with a clear purposefulness, heightened by the degree of freedom Mullova allows herself in linking the different sections of each movement. Similarly, instead of storming through the thorny technical problems of the Joachim cadenza (curiously not identified in the booklet), she again allows herself a degree of elbow-room, giving it more than usual the feeling of a spontaneous improvisation, culminating in an exceptionally sweet and pure account of the coda, bringing the most inward meditation of all.
The violin entry in the Adagio is then open and songful, with full meditative intensity reserved for later in the movement. The clarity of Mullova's articulation in the finale is phenomenal, the bravura most compelling. . . . Mullova's new disc makes an excellent recommendation . . . . (Edward Greenfield, Gramophone)

Sir Neville Marriner / Academy of St. Martin in the Fields MOZART Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - PACHELBEL Canon - L. MOZART "Toy" Symphony

Sir Neville Marriner here collects a miscellaneous group of popular classical and Baroque pieces in characteristically polished and elegant performances. The only roughness – and that deliberate – is in the extra toy percussion of Leo­pold Mozart’s Cassation, with its long- misattributed Toy Symphony. The anonymous extra soloists enjoy themselves as amateurs might, not least on a wind machine, but what’s very hard to take is the grotesquely mismatched cuckoo-whistle, an instrument which should readily be tunable. 

Eine kleine Nachtmusik brings a performance plainly designed to caress the ear of traditional listeners wearied with period performance. The second-movement Romanze is even more honeyed than usual on muted strings. The oddity of the Pachelbel item is that the celebrated Canon – taken unsentimentally if sweetly at a flowing speed – is given a reprise after the Gigue. The recording is warm and well balanced. (Gramophone)

Sir Neville Marriner / Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields MOZART Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - PACHELBEL Canon - L. MOZART "Toy" Symphony

Sir Neville Marriner here collects a miscellaneous group of popular classical and Baroque pieces in characteristically polished and elegant performances. The only roughness – and that deliberate – is in the extra toy percussion of Leo­pold Mozart’s Cassation, with its long- misattributed Toy Symphony. The anonymous extra soloists enjoy themselves as amateurs might, not least on a wind machine, but what’s very hard to take is the grotesquely mismatched cuckoo-whistle, an instrument which should readily be tunable. 

Eine kleine Nachtmusik brings a performance plainly designed to caress the ear of traditional listeners wearied with period performance. The second-movement Romanze is even more honeyed than usual on muted strings. The oddity of the Pachelbel item is that the celebrated Canon – taken unsentimentally if sweetly at a flowing speed – is given a reprise after the Gigue. The recording is warm and well balanced. (Gramophone)

Heinz Holliger / I Musici CONCERTI PER OBOE

This is not a record for the purists but, accepted for what it offers, it is an enjoyable one. The Marcello has long topped the baroque-oboe pop charts and has plenty of recordings, even on CD: Holliger's embellishment of its famous slow movement is fluent but perhaps over-elaborate for a melody whose lines are beautiful enough in their own right. The booklet tells us about Sammartini's ''Concerto No. 1 in F'', in four da chiesa movements, but not the fine Concerto (three movements, in D) on the recording, a newcomer to the catalogue. The Albinoni is a new recording not taken from the CD of six concertos from his Op. 9 by the same artists which are remasterings of originals from 1968. Lotti's small corpus of instrumental works includes only one concerto—for the oboe d'amore his preoccupation with vocal music is reflected particularly in the delightful affetuoso, a gentle siciliana and by far the longest single movement on the record. The change of instrument also brings some variety of tone-colour.
The odd man out is Cimarosa, who didn't write an oboe concerto: Arthur Benjamin it was who adapted some of his keyboard sonatas to compile one of four movements. The resultant hybrid makes agreeable listening but not more. Holliger's oboe sings beautifully and not, as the modern oboe is wont to do, down its nose. I Musici are in good form, light in touch and decently in touch with baroque style where it is called for, the harpsichord is nicely audible in the well-engineered recording.
(John Duarte, Gramophone_4/1988)