COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: RCA Red Seal
WORKS: Piano Concerto in A K414; Piano Concerto in D minor K466; Rondo in D K382
PERFORMER: Evgeny Kissin (piano)Moscow Virtuosi/Vladimir Spivakov
CATALOGUE NO: 09026 60400-2 DDD
Evgeny Kissin was 17 when he made this recording of the A major Concerto K414 (previously available separately as a CD ‘single’). It is an astonishingly mature performance, with a deeply felt account of the slow movement – a piece Mozart may well have written in memory of his old friend Johann Christian Bach, the news of whose death had just reached him.
No less remarkable, four years on, is Kissin’s playing in the much darker, more impassioned D minor Concerto K466 – a performance that brings out all the music’s intensity without compromising its Classical spirit. Particularly impressive are Beethoven’s cadenzas, played with rare depth and insight.
The only piece here that betrays Kissin’s age is the comparatively lightweight Rondo K382, a piece written as a substitute finale for Mozart’s early Salzburg concerto K175. (The original finale, in a contrapuntal sonata form, was clearly too learned for his Viennese audience.) This is music that needs more leisurely treatment if its elegant poise and gentle atmosphere of mock-pompousness are successfully to be conveyed. A splendid disc, however, with a contribution from the Moscow Virtuosi that is as stylish as one could wish. Misha Donat