Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 4

Naxos / 2023

For 19th-century audiences Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was the most loved of all his piano concertos, a work in which the balancing of high drama, tenderness, lyricism and humour is most pronounced and in which a coda resolves inner tensions with brilliance and triumphant grandeur. Piano Concerto No. 4 is the most introspective and poetic of the concertos. The simplicity of its opening piano statement gives way to an unprecedented dialogue in the central movement between a heartfelt piano and an austere unison string orchestra, before the infectious energy of the dramatic finale.

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
I. Allegro con brio
II. Largo
III. Rondo. Allegro

 

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58
I. Allegro moderato
II. Andante con moto
III. Rondo. Vivace

“Beautifully played and sensitively accompanied… After the lean, crisp introduction provided by Petrenko and the RLPO, so closely is Boris Giltburg’s sonorous, bell-like tone recorded here… Giltburg’s execution of the cadenza in the first movement of the Fourth is a masterclass.” – MusicWeb International

“Petrenko continues to favour the kind of lean, transparent textures, rhythmic spring and crisply aligned ensemble work associated with Szell, Zinman and Dausgaard, along with Abbado in his latter-day Mahler Chamber Orchestra recordings.” – Gramophone