Alon Goldstein, Fine Arts Quartet - Mozart: Piano Concertos 20 & 21 (2015/2017) [Official Digital Download 24-bit/192kHz]

Pianist Alon Goldstein is joined by American chamber music ensemble the Fine Arts Quartet and special guest Rachel Calin on double bass for the world premiere recordings of these chamber versions of two of Mozart’s greatest and most popular piano concertos. To make the two works more accessible to the public, 19th century composer Ignaz Lachner left the piano parts untouched and wrote splendid string quartet transcriptions of the orchestra parts with added bass. These arrangements sound almost as natural as if Mozart had transcribed them himself.

Mozart's orchestral music, and that of many other composers, was arranged for small ensembles for home use through much of the 19th century and even beyond; for those wanting to reproduce the music they liked at home, playing it was the way to do so. Mozart himself okayed the performance of some of the earlier, more string-heavy concertos a quattro, and he would have found these arrangements for piano, string quartet, and bass, perfectly normal. The arranger is Ignaz Lachner, a Romantic-era composer who was a youthful associate of Schubert in that composer's final years. The piano parts are unchanged, and in general these were probably state-of-the-art jobs of the time. Lachner catches the greater part of the polyphonic structure in the comparatively limpid Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, and pianist Alon Goldstein and the Fine Arts String Quartet take advantage of the chance to experiment with making the music more string quartet-like. All this said, the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, cannot be said to be anything other than a pale shadow of its original self here; it just cries out for the brass and wind parts; another concerto, perhaps one of the earlier ones, might have made a better choice. The sound, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, is well-suited to the material.

Tracklist:

01 - Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466: I. Allegro
02 - Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466: II. Romanze
03 - Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466: III. Rondo: Allegro assai
04 - Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 'Elvira Madigan': I. Allegro maestoso
05 - Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 'Elvira Madigan': II. Andante
06 - Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 'Elvira Madigan': III. Allegro vivace assai

Orchestra parts transcribed for string quartet and double bass by Ignaz Lachner.

Produced, Engineered & Edited by Steven Epstein.
Recorded on June 24-26, 2014 at The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City.

Musicians:
Alon Goldstein - piano
Rachel Calin - double bass
Fine Arts Quartet:
Ralph Evans - violin I
Efim Boico - violin II
Juan Miguel Hernandez - viola
Robert Cohen, Cello

2xHD mastering: René Laflamme and André Perry.
2xHD executive producer: André Perry.


Thanks to the Original customer!