Maria Pires in Beethoven

I am not an uncritical admirer of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. On occasions, his “rustic rudeness” seems to me to be somewhat false, and to be imposed from the outside rather than coming from inside the music. That being said, there is much music of Beethoven's that I love dearly, including many of the piano sonatas, sonatas for violin and piano, string quartets ... and the fourth piano concerto. I grew up with the fourth concerto in the 1950s played by Claudio Arrau. Although it is a work I know intimately, I was considerably impressed with a new recording where Maria Pires is partnered by Daniel Harding and the Stockholm Radio Symphony Orchestra.

It is something of a shock to discover that Pires is now 70 years old. She is a pianist whose stature seems to have grown and grown, and I recently enthused over her Schubert sonatas. To listen to, Pires reminds me of the late Clara Haskil; the same (deceptive) simplicity, the same avoidance of personal Lang Lang -type hyping. When Pires is playing, we listen to Beethoven's music; end of story.

I liked this CD a lot, not least because Daniel Harding and the Stockholm players make a real contribution to the performance. Too often with symphony orchestras playing concertos, the orchestra is stuffed with stand-in or substitute players, and some worthy and trustworthy conductor is put in charge of keeping pace with the soloist. In these two Beethoven piano concertos (the CD also contains the third concerto, a work I like less) pianist and orchestra really play in partnership; this comes to the fore especially in the imaginative slow movement of the fourth concerto where Pires's playing tames the savage orchestral beast in a way that would probably have greatly moved Beethoven himself. The Onyx recording is good and well-balanced so this now becomes my definitive version of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto. Anyone want my other 13 versions of this wonderful work? I'll hang on to Clara Haskil, however.