Written barely 15 years apart, the first and final piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven demonstrate beyond any doubt the incredible amount of growth and development in the composer's writing in an impressively short period of time. The First Concerto, while still very much in the classical idiom of Mozart, already hints at Beethoven's yearning to expand the genre beyond its traditional confines. In the Fifth Concerto, Beethoven achieves his goal with a titanic concerto, with which a generation of subsequent composers must compete both in terms of its pianistic complexity and its sweeping symphonic nature. Illustrating this transformation on this album is the Foundation Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento under the direction of
Gustav Kuhn and pianist
Jasminka Stancul. In this case, the orchestra's performance far outshines the soloist's. The orchestral tuttis of the First Concerto are crisp and energetic, with appropriate care taken not to be too heavy, while the Fifth Concerto displays the full power of the orchestra in Beethoven's considerably weightier, denser orchestration. By comparison,
Stancul's playing is somewhat unidimensional and rigid and the emotional content of her playing never rises to the level of the orchestra. There's little noticeably different between her approach to the First Concerto and the Fifth. Col Legno's sound quality is generally acceptable, but the recording level is extremely quiet, necessitating volume adjustments throughout.