Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano); Lucerne Symphony Orchestra/Michael Sanderling
Warner Classics 5419783783 63:17 mins
Elisabeth Leonskaja’s live performances of the Schumann and Grieg piano concertos have been cause for wonder. The rolling movement over the keyboard in the Schumann and a far from note-perfect Grieg with the Estonian Festival Orchestra in Parnu still only went to prove the mistake of replacing her at the BBC Proms later that summer with Khatia Buniatishvili, a brilliant but wayward pianist with none of the same grip on the dance music.
Here it’s obvious which is the deeper work because of the chamber music Leonskaja makes with the excellent woodwind soloists of Michael Sanderling’s Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in Schumann’s first movement. The Intermezzo is a true dialogue with the players, the finale more Beethovenesque, but lightened by the ripple effect following in the wake of the fantasy march in the finale. Sanderling over indulges the cellos at the heart of the work, and makes slightly heavy work of Grieg’s lyrical countersubject in his first movement; but Leonskaja always energises even the lyrical – Grieg’s slow movement is a good case in point.
And she offers, as always, both the right kind of weight in what could be grandiose and the subtlest articulation in the more delicate passages. There are other ways of performing these works, but these interpretations are utterly consistent and totally enlightening. Sound is well balanced; even though the wind are slightly set back as they would be in the concert hall, they make their personable mark from the oboe’s perfect turn in Schumann’s opening to the incandescent flute in Grieg’s finale: pure melodic genius.
