Piano Concertos 1 – 5
Ronald Brautigam Fortepiano
The Cologne Academy
Michael Alexander Willens
BIS 2274
2 CDs Full price
The Review
Ronald Brautigam is no stranger to these concertos, having recorded them both on the modern piano and its historical equivalent. In this latest recording he uses two copies of instruments contemporary with the time of composition made by the American builder, Paul McNulty, in his country workshop in the Czech Republic.
The first three concertos are played on one designed by Anton Walter, similar to that Beethoven admired but could not quite afford in 1802, the year before the third concerto was finished. It does not have any foot pedals, instead relying on sustaining and moderator (soft) controls worked by the knees, so the performer has to keep taking a foot (or both) off the floor, making it hard to maintain balance and therefore smooth fingering. The pianist needs an organist’s co-ordination. No wonder it went out of fashion. Brautigam, luckily, has mastered the acrobatics.
For concertos four and five (the Emperor) Brautigam moves to a version of an instrument by Conrad Graf from around 1819. This goes to the other extreme with four pedals: two moderators, one sustaining and ‘una corda’. Graf did provide a piano for Beethoven in 1825, though by then the composer would have been able to hear almost nothing of its sound or subtlety.
There is a clear difference between the fortepianos: the Walter well suited to the more classical early concertos and the Graf able to provide more power for the much more symphonic final pair. The third concerto is a transitional work and the Walter does sound a little out gunned by the orchestra. I suspect Beethoven was aiming for a more ambitious sound than most makers could offer him in 1803.
The shifting of instruments and of styles in the quarter of a century over which Beethoven wrote them requires technical and historical imagination as much from the orchestra as the soloist. Using instruments as appropriate to the period as the fortepianos, the Cologne Academy is spectacularly successful – clear, crisp and emphatic in outer movements, providing a beautiful mellow string tone in more lyrical sections. Willens and Brautigam understand each other seamlessly.
Quite rightly their interpretations chart the progress of the works with markedly different approaches. In the earliest (the second, confusingly), written while Mozart was still alive, Brautigam plays with the light agility of the late eighteenth century. By the time we get to the Emperor, written at the height of the Napoleonic wars, the need for elegance has been replaced by fire. There is no less virtuosity in the early works – it is just there for a very different purpose. From the time Napoleon goes on the rampage against the rest of Europe, Beethoven is a much more political composer.
Perhaps the concerto where there is least distance between this version and those on modern instruments is the fourth. It is certainly the performance I keep returning to with the greatest pleasure; a perfectly judged combination of precision and warmth, where the tonal breadth of a twenty-first century piano is missed least. Overall this set is a splendid essay on the journey through Beethoven’s concertos, as his audiences might have heard them (though not quite with such well blended orchestras). While many listeners will always want a collection in a more recent tradition, this Brautigam version is a superbly executed alternative that provides proper perspective.
SM