I could have danced all night. Maybe not! But, headphone-adorned, I did stay up into the small hours to experience Beethoven’s quintet of Piano Concertos, one after the other (two tea intervals taken), as played by Stewart Goodyear (born 1978 in Toronto) with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Andrew Constantine (4-14 September 2018, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff). And a very rewarding few hours it was, too. They give us the music as we know and love it, very well prepared and well-judged regarding articulate tempos, always flowing, with particular reference to shapely phrasing, light and shade, dynamic variety and illuminating piano-and-orchestra interplay. If nothing novel, let alone controversial, these accounts rely on wholesome musical values to succeed, which they do, handsomely. To the roll of honour, producer Andrew Keener and engineer Simon Eadon should be mentioned. All cadenzas are by Beethoven, and where there is a choice, Goodyear opts for the long one in the first movement of No.1 and the more-usual of the available pair for the corresponding movement of No.4. Released on Orchid Classics ORC100127 (3 CDs), this set is highly recommended to seasoned collectors and newbies alike; the music lifts off the page with spirit and soul.
Beethoven 250 – Stewart Goodyear records the Five Piano Concertos [Orchid Classics]
For me, regarding cadenzas, ‘the long one in the first movement of No 1’ is a no-no – it was written quite a few years later for a different sized piano and throws the whole movement out of kilter. The best one is the unfinished No 3, where the pianist can add his or her thoughts – otherwise the long one is a ‘Peter-piper-picked-a-pack-of-pickled-peppers. in the middle of Hamlet’s soliloquy.
Interesting view Robert … personally I’m quite partial to the “long one” but, true, written much later (by around 1809) and to an extent dependent on the scaling of the performance – better suited to the profounder than lighter approach. Where do you stand in relation to the cadenza for the B-flat Concerto? Now that’s always left me a bit uncomfortable – a sort of hammerklavier (and Hammerklavier) within a fortepiano conception …
I think the long cadenza for the C major is itself a masterpiece which has often been overlooked by Beethoven scholars (alongside most of his extant cadenzas), its importance being a revisiting of an early masterpiece by a great genius looking back on one of his earlier triumphs and producing a later commentary. As such, it exists (in my view) as a separate concert piece, performable in recital, or – better, perhaps – as an encore to a performance of the Concerto. I fully understand the soloist’s attraction for the long cadenza, but to my ears it really does upset the inherent formal design of that movement, which the unfinished third cadenza (if ‘properly’ completed in spontaneous performance). does not. I should love to hear a recording of the C major with the 3rd cadenza in situ, and the long one as a separate track – it places Beethoven’s later thoughts on this work in context – providing, of course, that the third cadenza if performed separately, is ended by a simple (!) full close and a C major held chord, not left hanging in the air. I realise what I am going to say may appear contentious, but the only performance on disc which to my mind truly gets to the heart of this movement is Leonard Bernstein’s with the New York Philharmonic. In the first place, he plays and directs from the keyboard, and his thrilling semiquaver descent in octaves always sends a chill down my spine, but most importantly of all – something I’ve never encountered in any other performance from Schnabel onwards, is that Bernstein plays the whole of the development section of the first movement at a very slightly slower tempo than the remainder (the exposition and recapitulation are in the same slightly faster tempo) but as he plays the immense third cadenza, this infusion of grandeur within the development justifies its inclusion in a way no other pianist or conductor in my experience equals (let alone grasps the musical significance). Bernstein’s interpretative decisions fully reinforce the nobility and breadth of the whole work – but as so few pianist/conductors do that, my heart often sinks when they start the long cadenza: ‘here’s my chance’, they seem to say and off we go on a trip round the houses until they come back to Main Street or Sunset and Vine. With regard to the cadenza in the B flat Concerto I am less dogmatic: it truly depends on the performers, but I am always on tenterhooks by how the soloist is going to treat Beethoven’s pedal markings at the end of the slow movement – they (the soloists) so often ruin the atmosphere! — a convincing musical case for playing the work on a contemporaneous instrument, as the modern pedal cannot but produce a different effect than the one Beethoven surely had in mind.
On 19 January 2008 in the RFH, John Lill played LvB’s PC1 with the London Philharmonic & Roberto Minczuk. If I may quote from my Classical Source review: “Lill opted for the least-played of Beethoven’s three cadenzas for the first movement, the one that is mid-length between the extremes of the others; it is also incomplete and Lill’s additions to it made it all of a piece.” Colin