Robert Levin is on livewire form in the early concertos, says Rebecca Franks
CONCERTO CHOICE
Mozart
Piano Concertos Nos 6-8, K238; K242; K246
Robert Levin (fortepiano), Ya-Fei Chuang (fortepiano), Bojan Čičić (violin), Academy of Ancient Music/ Laurence Cummings (harpsichord)
Academy of Ancient Music AAM044 60 mins
There’s backstory to enjoy with this Mozart, the penultimate instalment in the reboot of an abandoned 1990s cycle on Decca, coaxed back to life for the AAM’s own label during the pandemic. Robert Levin intends it to be an antidote to uniform, mass-produced Mozart, giving the life-spark back to this music. Production values are high, and there’s a delicious amount of connoisseur’s detail in the generous album booklet.
But the main event is Mozart’s music itself – and the performance is constantly alive, alert and superbly done. In this 12th volume, it’s the turn of three concertos written in the winter and spring of 1776. That date matters. Historical sleuthing revealed that fortepianos weren’t available in Salzburg then, yet dynamic markings in the score suggest the composer didn’t have a harpsichord in mind.
What instrument, then, should the soloist play? Levin chooses a rare tangent piano – something of a cross between fortepiano, clavichord and harpsichord – whose sound can evoke both a tangy, spiky harpsichord (as in the first movement of No. 6) or something more singing in tone (try No. 6’s serene slow movement). If the sound is one delight, others include the deft playing, sprightly tempos, and dynamics that convey drama without ever being exaggerated.
The 11th disc featured the two-piano version of the Concerto No. 7 for three pianos. Here we get the full version, with Levin on tangent piano, Chung on fortepiano and Laurence Cummings on harpsichord. A lively melting-pot, beautifully recorded.
PERFORMANCE
★★★★★
RECORDING
★★★★★
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JS Bach
Violin Concertos
Leonidas Kavakos (violin); The ApollΩn Ensemble
Sony Classical 19658868932 64:26 mins
JS Bach’s chamber music has been a continuing source of re-evaluation: the presumption that he wrote his violin concertos for the court at Cöthen has been overtaken by the notion that at least some were conceived later, for the secular Coll
