If I had to cull the finest Mozart piano concerto recordings from 20 years’ worth of Vox releases, my short list probably would match producer Todd Landor’s astute selection for this five-disc anthology. Pianist Walter Klien is featured in seven out of the 12 works. His stylish, tasteful solo work boasts the rippling cultivation we associate with Walter Gieseking, although he’s not a wit, a dramatist, or a poet on the level of Murray Perahia, Richard Goode, Lili Kraus, Rudolf Serkin, or Mitsuko Uchida. The G major K. 453 and B-flat K. 595 concertos, splendidly accompanied by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the Minnesota Orchestra, bookend this collection. The rhythmic verve and definition Peter Maag elicits from the provincial yet spirited Vienna Volksoper Orchestra in the “Coronation” K. 537, K. 491 C minor, and A major K. 488 concertos must be heard to be believed (especially the woodwind tuttis in the latter’s finale). Klien’s less striking but well-played collaborations with Günter Kehr and the Mainz Chamber Orchestra also merit attention.
Two Alfred Brendel performances from 1967 with Paul Angerer at the helm (K. 482 and K. 503) not only stand out for the collection’s most vivid sonics, but also are superior to the pianist’s Philips remakes. Compare, for instance, Brendel’s scampering, shapely way with the ascending triplet sequences in K. 503’s finale to his blander, relatively uninflected treatment of the same passages later on and you’ll hear what I mean. By contrast, the 1978 Double Concerto recording with Rudolf Firkusny and Alan Weiss (conducted by David Zinman) suffers from close-up, boxy, and dynamically limited engineering. What a difference upon turning to the natural resonance and honest balances distinguishing Ingrid Haebler’s finely honed 1958 accounts of the K. 466 D minor and K. 459 F major (remastered, by the way, from LP pressings). True, the Vienna Symphony’s strings are a bit scrawny and ill-tuned, but listen to the scurrying solo wind exchanges in the finale and try to conceal a smile. There’s fine music making in these old grooves.
