Liza Ferschtman plays this music beautifully, with an amazingly pure tone, thoughtful phrasing, and the kind of serenity that doesn’t preclude energy that the music seems to demand. She’s wonderfully accompanied by Jan Willem de Vriend, who takes cognizance of period practice in the pungent wind timbres and prominent trumpets and drums, but otherwise doesn’t make an ugly fetish out of it. The couplings are also logical, and every bit as well played as the concerto. Ferschtman sounds particularly at home in the music’s frequent lyrical passages: the concerto’s slow movement, the second subject of the first movement, and the two Romances. At times, and despite her perfect intonation, her tone sounds a touch slender, particularly given the robust orchestral contributions and realistic balances.
There are two further areas of concern. Ferschtman’s phrasing of the finale sounds a touch self-conscious. The music needs to bound forward, whereas here she quite obviously “fiddles” with it. Second, she uses Wolfgang Schneiderhan’s horrible violin transcription of Beethoven’s horrible cadenza (with timpani) from the piano arrangement of the concerto’s solo part. The use of timpani is, of course, fascinating, but the only reason that Beethoven wrote that cadenza was to give the piano something pianistic to do. It’s incredibly long and (to me) breaks the movement’s back, structurally speaking. It’s also quite out of character considering the interpretive ambit of the performance generally.
My colleague, Christophe Huss, felt quite differently about this issue, and gives this disc an enthusiastic “10”–so check out his review on the French site and if you agree with him, go for it. Otherwise, I am quite happy to give this release a qualified recommendation, while agreeing with Christoph that this is an undoubtedly serious and musicianly effort. [2/25/2011]
