Mozart: Piano Concertos 17 & 20

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Mozart
Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: "The Polish-Hungarian pianist Piotr Anderszewski … continues to follow his own path on an engrossing new Virgin Classics recording … with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He is both soloist and conductor. The Concerto No. 20 in D minor … is a grimly dramatic work. Yet there is a great elegance. … Mr. Anderszewski's cagey and entrancing performance captures the work's elusiveness. The first movement is rhythmically free and boldly expressive, yet in a subtle and soft-spoken way. Some passagework creeps along stealthily, almost in a whisper. In the development section, when the soloist and orchestra engage in dialogue, Mr. Anderszewski makes the piano's statements seem deceptively timid, as if the soloist is trying to sneak in strategic rebuttals to the bossy orchestra. Yet when a forceful passage in the piano comes along, the impact in context is overwhelming. Like most other pianists, Mr. Anderszewski opts for the intensely dramatic cadenza Beethoven wrote for the first movement. Yet he plays it with such impetuosity that you would think he was improvising it on the spot."