Mozart & Beethoven: Piano & Wind Quintets - André Previn & Vienna Wind Soloists

These are accomplished performances which I’m sure I would have enjoyed more if the picture of sound, as the LP presents it, had been truer to the music. For my taste, the piano is too distant and unfocused in relation to the wind, as if placed directly behind the wind line-up and well back. As a result, it often doesn't have enough presence in the play of colour, and its contributions to the discourse seem too remote.

I began with the Beethoven and never felt at ease with the balance, though by the last movement it appears to have improved—and with it the liveliness and sharpness of the ensemble playing, as one would expect. You can imagine Beethoven himself making a big effect in the forceful and virtuoso piano part, and I don‘t think he would have been delighted by the impression one gets of it here.

The wind stick together as a unit on their own. On the Nash Ensemble’s CRD record you sense that because the balance is right all the players can listen to each other more acutely and function better as a team. You notice too a better line to their performance, of the first movement especially, and a much better characterized range of dynamics. The Vienna Wind Soloists are too loud most of the time.

To me, the Nash‘s record represents chamber music playing of high class and offers a satisfying version of both pieces. The players are ideally matched and also a match for Mozart‘s and Beethoven‘s considerable demands on them as soloists. I don‘t get on so well with the Viennese wind: I dislike the oboe in the Beethoven slow movement, his low notes in particular, and in the slow movement of the Mozart I find the horn vulgar in his solo after the double-bar. Previn does well throughout, without ever sounding quite sure how he wants the main theme of the Mozart finale to go; and at this very moderate tempo Mozart‘s wonderful cadenza for all the instruments is rather a plod, when it arrives, instead of a high point. S. P.

MOZART. Piano and Wind Quintet in E flat major, K.452
1.I. Largo - Allegro moderato (11:10)
2. II. Larghetto (9:20)
3. III. Rondo: Allegro moderato (6:14)

BEETHOVEN: Piano and Wind Quintet in E flat major. Op.16
4. I. Grave - Allegro ma non troppo (13:33)
5. II. Andante cantabile (7:21)
6. III. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo (5:43)

André Previn (p1); Vienna Wind Soloists (Gerhard Turetschek, ob, Peter Schmidt, cI; Volker Altmann, hn; Friedrich FaltI, bn)

Recorded in Schubertsalle, Vienna on April 24 & 25, 1985