Andrew Parrott

Ronald Brautigam, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Parrott – Beethoven: Piano Concertos WoO4 and No.2 (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 58:04 minutes | 507 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

Released in 2008, Beethoven’s First and Third Piano Concertos as interpreted by Ronald Brautigam and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Parrott (BIS-SACD-1692) have been making an impression on critics all over the world. The freshness of the performances have struck many, for instance the reviewer in the German magazine Fono Forum who wrote: ‘Here Mozartian grace and Haydnesque wit join hands – and both concertos gain from it, in the flowing, breathing pulse, in intimacy, in nobility and unassuming beauty … a great moment.’ His colleague in Fanfare (USA) was in complete agreement, writing that ‘the music is unshackled from the dark and heavy blanket that so many performances impose on the score … a unique and, perhaps, revelatory take on the music.’ Teaming up again, the same performers now offer us the youthfully fresh Concerto No. 2 – which was actually conceived long before the First Piano Concerto – as well as two rarities. The first of these is the Piano Concerto in E flat major, WoO4, sometimes referred to as Beethoven’s ‘Concerto No.0’. Composed in 1784, when Beethoven was only 13 years old, it is a fully developed three-movement work that displays much imagination, harmonic control and sense of form, as well as a striking level of virtuosity. The work has survived in a contemporary copy of the piano part, incorporating directions showing that the original orchestra consisted of two flutes, two horns, and strings. For this recording Ronald Brautigam has made his own reconstruction of the orchestral score. The third work on the disc is also one without opus number, namely the Rondo in B flat major, WoO6, composed during the long gestation of Concerto No.2 and probably at one stage intended as the finale of this work.
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Ronald Brautigam, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Parrott – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 3 (2008)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:16 minutes | 563 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

If they have not already heard the recordings themselves, everyone with an interest in Beethoven will at least have heard reports of Ronald Brautigam’s ongoing cycle of the complete music for solo piano. Performed on the fortepiano, this project has been greeted with enormous interest by the reviewers. One contributing factor has been the choice of instrument, which has brought new perspectives to the music, causing one reviewer to expect a cycle ‘that challenges the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift’ (Fanfare). But more important for the critical success have been the direct and immediately engaging interpretations. ‘One has almost the feeling of being Beethoven’s contemporary, one of the first, infinitely surprised – not to say shocked – listeners to this music’ as the reviewer in Süddeutsche Zeitung phrased it, backed up by his colleague in International Record Review, writing about the Moonlight Sonata: ‘a Presto agitato from hell; such controlled fury and unrelenting intensity, yet musical to the core, and never banged out. It took sometime before I was able to unpin myself to the wall…’
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Ronald Brautigam, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Parrott – Beethoven: Piano Concertos in D, Op. 61 & No.4 (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:34 minutes | 577 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

In 1806, Beethoven composed two concertos – the Fourth Piano Concerto followed by the Violin Concerto Op. 61. In both cases the composer soon returned to the works to produce new versions, and it is these later versions that are presented here. At the public première of the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1808, Beethoven performed the piano part very ‘capriciously’ according to his pupil Carl Czerny, playing many more notes than are to be found in the printed edition. A clear indication of what Beethoven played comes from his copyist’s orchestral score, in which the outer movements contain annotations in the composer’s hand. These have been transcribed by Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper who, in his insightful liner notes, describes this rarely recorded 1808 version as ‘strikingly inventive’ and ‘more sparkling, virtuosic and sophisticated than the standard one’. In the case of the Opus 61 concerto, Beethoven succeeded in writing what many consider to be the quintessential violin concerto. Less well-known is the fact that soon after the first performance, Beethoven produced an arrangement of the solo part for piano, modifying the violin part slightly in the process. When the work was first published, it was as a concerto for violin or piano. Worth noting is that although Beethoven did not compose any cadenzas for the violin, he did so for the piano version. The one for the first movement is especially striking, in that it includes a part for timpani, reminding us of the timpani solo that begins the entire work. Ronald Brautigam and the Norrköping SO under Andrew Parrott have received acclaim for two previous discs of Beethoven’s works for piano and orchestra: ‘These well-known works emerge as if freshly minted’ wrote International Record Review about Concertos Nos. 1 and 3, while the German magazine Piano News hailed the release of No.2 and the youthful Concerto WoO4 as ‘a magnificent recording in which Brautigam demonstrates his stylistic expertise, and which shows what a splendid pianist he is.
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