The great cellist Heinrich Schiff may be an inspiring and thoughtful conductor at times (his Schubert symphonies, his Chopin concertos with soloist Nikolai Demidenko), but not in these diffident Beethoven concerto performances, recorded live in September 2011. Chordal attacks yield unpredictable balances, first-desk solos are sometimes reticent (the Fourth concerto Rondo’s second theme), dynamics rarely extend past mezzo-forte and mezzo-piano, while phrasing rarely attains levels beyond square and routine. String ensemble ranges from atypically strong and focused in the Fourth concerto Adagio to scrawny and rhythmically iffy in the Second concerto Allegro con brio ritornello.
Stefan Stroissnig’s fluent yet unassertive, characterless pianism doesn’t help matters, and he even holds back the reins in the first-movement cadenza of the Second concerto, where most world-class Beethoven stylists relish the composer’s unbridled sense of fantasy. Nor does Stroissnig take advantage of the expressive potential in the Fourth concerto Adagio’s intense trills or the first-movement cadenza’s dramatic accents and sudden mood changes (he plays the more common cadenza favored by Schnabel, Fleisher, and Arrau). With so many fine recorded versions of these staples from which to choose, this release is unnecessary.
