Nov 8: ECM New Series Releases Alexander Lonquich's recording of Beethoven Piano Concertos
ECM New Series Releases
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Concertos
Alexander Lonquich
Münchener Kammerorchester
Alexander Lonquich, piano
Münchener Kammerorchester
Daniel Giglberger, concertmaster
Release Date: November 8, 2024
ECM New Series 2753-55
CD: 0289 487 6904 9
Press downloads available upon request.
Alexander Lonquich, one of the foremost performers in chamber music and as a soloist, has said that “every encounter with a work of art is at the same time an exploration of one's own existential position. This is the only way to make music today.” The New York Times has called him “an original at the piano who features both orderliness and suppleness”, and his musical authority has brought him to some of the most prestigious festivals and stages across the world and led to collaborations with renowned orchestras and musicians alike. After a first appearance on ECM’s New Series with premiere recordings of Israeli composer Gideon Lewensohn’s works on Odradek (2002), two subsequent solo recitals plus a duo programme with violinist Caroline Widmann (2012), here pianist Alexander Lonquich, alongside the Münchener Kammerorchester, rises to a more extensive challenge, in performing the entirety of Beethoven’s piano concertos, programmed in chronological order. Beethoven’s five completed piano concertos – the C major op. 15, the B flat op. 19, the C minor op. 37, the G major op. 58 and the “Emperor”, in E flat major, op 73 – were composed between about 1793 to 1809, documenting the composer’s development over two decades.
In his detailed liner note, the German pianist calls these recordings a “very special experience, for performers and listeners alike. The usually common placement of the individual works in the context of a symphony concert all too often runs the risk of confirming and reinforcing what is already traditional, while this chronological order draws attention to stylistic leaps in the compositions and allows the listener to experience Beethoven's development as the author of these outward-looking creations that illustrate his pianistic virtuosity between 1790 and 1809.”
Almost no other genre in Beethoven’s body of work was created within as condensed a time-span as his piano concertos – his quartets, symphonies and piano sonatas for instance he wrote over the entire span of his artistic life. Accordingly, his rapid stylistic evolution, from a deeply Mozart-inspired thinker to the utterly independent and influential composer he is known to be, can be traced in detail over the course of these concertos.
Lonquich talks about this evolution in his liner note, also addressing the always technically challenging qualities of Beethoven’s works: “The one aspect of the concertos he performed himself that cannot be ignored is a tendency towards virtuosity: the cadenzas of the first movements written down by him give an impression of his exuberant playing, while in elaborations written years later, such as in the 1809 C major concerto's candenza, he certainly did not shy away from stylistic breaks; we also know, in contrast to his interpretative demands concerning the piano sonatas, that even the final versions were little more for him than templates for spontaneous or prepared variation – the audience had to be surprised time and again. With op. 37, the period of orientation towards the past definitely comes to an end; what follows is itself a model.”
The concertos were captured at the Rathausprunksaal, Landshut in January 2022.