CD REVIEW – BEETHOVEN
Piano Concerto No.5 'Emperor'
Piano Concerto No.0, Wo04
Boris Giltburg Vasily Petrenko
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Naxos 8.574153 [62:40]

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Along with many others I enthusiastically reviewed Beethoven's first two piano concertos by these forces back in October 2019. I wonder why Naxos have waited 15 months before releasing this follow-up album: the first work recorded at the same time as the first release, the second in November 2020. Perhaps it was a consequence of the wretched Covid, for surely the reason cannot be that it now costs 50% more to buy than did the earlier release.

It is fascinating to learn that the great composer was only aged 13 when he wrote Concerto No.0 in 1783, and it was not even his earliest work. The pianist explains in his helpful booklet notes that with the orchestral score lost, the surviving version for solo piano is written in Beethoven’s hand which includes the tutti sections (i.e., where all the instruments perform together) reduced for piano. As an alternative to reconstructing the lost orchestration, he has recorded the work as a concerto without orchestra, limiting himself to the remaining original material.

Concerto No.5 'Emperor' was written in the same key as the No.0 when Beethoven was 38 and at the peak of his considerable powers. It is probably the most popular of the five and, if you subscribe to there being only good and bad music, it is very much in the former category whatever genre you enjoy.

36-year-old Boris Giltburg – a Moscow born Israeli – plays an Italian Fazioli instrument and is up there with the best of today's pianists, and the accompaniment by Vasily Petrenko's RLP0 has plenty of the maestro's usual flair.

If you are concerned about purchasing an album with a Russian born conductor, albeit one who also became a British citizen in 2015, be reassured by him suspending all his work in Russia and stating: "The tragedy unfolding in Ukraine is already one of the greatest moral failures and humanitarian disasters of our century." Giltburg, too, has written: "As a tiny gesture of support, for as long as the invasion continues (and beyond!), I will be learning works by Ukrainian composers and sharing them on social media, and later in concert. Praying that peace may be restored soon."

This is a joyful release with fine sound quality and recording engineering. Let us hope we do not have to wait another year or more for the issue of the promised cycle to be completed.

© Peter Burt 2022