Mozart: The Piano Concertos [Box set]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer), John Eliot Gardiner (Conductor), English Baroque Soloists (Orchestra), Malcolm Bilson (Performer), Robert Levin (Performer), Melvyn Tan (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Malcolm Bilson, Robert Levin, Melvyn Tan
• Orchestra: English Baroque Soloists
• Conductor: John Eliot Gardiner
• Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Audio CD (March 13, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 9
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Archiv Produktion
• ASIN: B00002DEGZ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,522 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful, March 29, 2001

By 

"jmgf77" (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mozart: The Piano Concertos (Audio CD)

An excellent survey of Mozart's original piano concertos (5 through 27, the first four being pastiches), recorded between 1983 and 1988 and now reissued in a mid-price format by Archiv. Bilson and Gardiner are two of the luminaries of period performance, so one naturally has the highest expectations, although the more recent set by Levin and Hogwood does offer some serious competition. And, while the collaboration improves both in polish and rapport as the set progresses, these performances are sure not to disappoint. Following contemporary practice, Bilson plays continuo throughout, a touch which may surprise some listeners brought up on modern-instrument records. Similarly, Bilson's cadenzas could seem restrained to those viewing these works through the lens of the Romantic piano concerto, though he is also at liberty to ornament the written part more freely. But the delicacy of the slow movement of the 23rd concerto here needs no apologies, even held up again Horowitz's late recording; and often-- as in the cadenza to the last concerto, drawing upon "Sehnsucht nach dem Fruhlinge," a song Mozart composed around the same time-- the scholarship backing these performances up only enhances their invention and charm. An excellent collection, and an even better deal.

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Man-eating piano slain, February 23, 2006

By 

Paul S. (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mozart: The Piano Concertos (Audio CD)

It's not that Bilson is the world's greatest (forte-) pianist, although he's very, very good. (He's better as a performer than as a composer--he uses his own cadenzas where better ones, such as Beethoven's in #20, are commonly played.) It's not that two centuries of developing the modern piano were wasted effort, and the fortepiano sounds best after all. It's not that history trumps musicality. What makes these recordings great is that an appropriate balance between soloist and orchestra is restored.

Anyone with a sense of musical proportion, who listens carefully to recordings of piano concertos, can tell that the piano is often in the foreground when it belongs in the background, and backup from other instruments is often nearly inaudible. Of course this is especially true of the earlier concertos (Bach, Haydn, Mozart), which were scored and written based on the feeble solo instruments of the time.

Here, Archiv's restraint in miking/mixing, on top of the severe limitations of the fortepiano, greatly shifts the balance of power back towards the orchestra. This is not invariably an improvement, but most of the time it restores proper proportion to Mozart's music, with outstanding results. Often it adds drama, because instead of floating above the orchestral fray, the soloist must play very forcefully to address the competing sound of the orchestra. Perhaps the orchestra plays with a bit more conviction knowing they're not just going to be overrun by a Steinway the size of an Amtrak.

As Bilson was literally the first to admit (in the original CD notes), the fortepianos he plays cannot deliver the long legato line that pianists use to great effect in the slow movements. So there is much to be said for hearing these works on the modern piano. But Bilson and Gardiner take the bull by the horns, pick up the tempo as needed, and make the slow movements convincing on their own terms.

I got the full-priced edition years ago, and greatly enjoy going back and forth between it and modern-piano versions. Highly, though not exclusively, recommended.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Magic Fortepiano, July 23, 2008

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Mozart: The Piano Concertos (Audio CD)

Mozart was a Mason. A child of the Enlightenment. A believer in humanity's perfectability, who had the philosophical luck to die before the disappointments of the French revolution. He wrote music of tragedy and despair, but he never wrote a note of Gothic horror, of 'Romantic' reaction against rationality, a task he left untouched, shall we say, for the next generation. If you want your Mozart to sound like the art of someone who's been reading Schopenhauer, you won't like this set of piano concertos played by Malcolm Bilsen, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting.

Bilsen plays a period keyboard fortepiano, an instrument of much lighter construction than the modern pianoforte, on which the 'decay' of note reverberation is naturally quicker, making a softer and more transparent sound. The orchestra of period instruments that Gardiner conducts is also smaller by far and more carefully tuned than the modern symphony orchestra, and emphasizes the polyphonic/heterophonic interplay of all the voices of the composition. The tempi chosen by Gardiner are often faster, more nimble, more witty than most post-Wagnerian conductors choose. The result is a Mozart who sounds as if he's passed Sarastro's "initiation" into wisdom as portrayed in the Magic Flute, rather than settling into the syphilitic gloom of 19th C Romantic pianism.

There is no absolutely historically authenticized version of Mozart, and double-absolutely no "definitive" performance of these twenty-seven concertos. I recently made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that a performance of them on harpsichord might be revealing, since Mozart grew up in a milieu in which harpsichords were far more familiar than pianos of any sort. The touch required to play the fortepiano, Bilsen's instrument, is closer in some ways to a harpsichord touch than that developed by Liszt and Chopin. It's the touch, as much as the specific instrument, that matters for performing Mozart. Bilsen has the touch. I like his sound, a judgement by ear alone, better than that of Derek Han or Melvyn Tan, two other historical keyboard specialists. And I admire Gardiner's spunk - his musical intuition - even when occasionally his interpretations are rash.

But don't take my word for anything! Use the sample function; compare the same snippets from the same concertos on as many recordings as you have patience for. I'd suggest Concerto #20.