Review: Mozart - Piano Concertos - Khatia Buniatishvili

The orchestra here is the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. The first comparison that springs to mind is Alfred Brendel’s remarkable cycle of Mozart’s complete piano concertos, performed with the same ensemble and conducted by Sir Neville Marriner. The ASMF also accompanied, in this same repertoire, Ivan Moravec, Rudolf Buchbinder and, more recently, Hai-Kyung Suh. But Khatia Buniatishvili is a different pianist, and allows herself to be carried away with the music as Brendel and the other pianists rarely do.

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The standout moments here are the solo opening bars of both slow movements, where Buniatishvili’s ability to infuse color into the sound is fully evident. Listen to her captivating inner conviction as she sings at the piano’s outcry on K. 488’s Adagio (track 5, 5’45”). I was less convinced, though, with the pianist’s addition of lower-bass octave notes in the final bars of each concerto, as if to finish with a bang (Mozart’s instruments didn’t include these lower bass notes). The final movements are taken at a relatively fast speed, and could have been enthralling if not for the blurry recording.

It’s not clear (quite literally) what Sony Classical’s aim is with their latest piano concertos recordings; As with the recent Brahms’ Piano Concertos album, performed by Igor Levit and reviewed here, the sound engineering has once again too much echo, muffled orchestral sound and a noticeable lack of bass. This time the piano is more forwardly placed than in the Brahms recording, but the overall balance is certainly not on par with alternative recordings. Things sound marginally better when hearing the album on a good set of headphones or in Dolby Atmos, which this recording supports.

K.466’s slow movement’s fast section is a case in point (track 2, 4’22”): the sound picture prevents us from hearing what could have been an impressive display of dexterity and coordination, but these are drowned in the wash of sound. The same issue arises in the intricate dialogues of the first movement, with the crucial timpani role so weak that I was wondering if it was left out completely.

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The album ends with a lovely performance of the so-called “Sonata Facile”, K. 545, where Buniatishvili combines the playfulness, singing quality, and her strong finger work in service of the music. This performance shows once again how far from “easy” this sonata is, and that good pianists can do wonders with it, especially the middle movement’s operatic segments. Buniatishvili’s brilliant execution of short notes in the finale proves how funny Mozart can be when his indications are taken seriously.