BEETHOVEN: Piano Concertos No. 4 and 5 (“Emperor’’) Yevgeny Sudbin, pianistMinnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä, conductor BIS Records
The Minnesota Orchestra’s Beethoven cycle, completed in 2008, was a great accomplishment, perhaps the most splendid American set since George Szell’s with the Cleveland Orchestra in the 1960s. Now, the orchestra and its engaging conductor, Osmo Vänskä, have moved on to the piano concertos with the young Russian-born, London-resident pianist Yevgeny Sudbin.
Sudbin’s first recordings were splendid collections of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Scarlatti, and Haydn, and his style — precise and sensuously delighting in textures and colors (think Horowitz without the neurotic drive) — suits all of those composers. But Beethoven, the composer who rattles the heavens? The memory of big-muscled performers Emil Gilels or Leon Fleisher, or austere ministers of the gospel such as Rudolf Serkin, casts inevitable shadows and Sudbin should be allowed his own approach. Nevertheless, the expectation is ingrained in the music: In Beethoven, the pianist is pitted against a monumental orchestra, and one should feel the effort to stand up to it. Sudbin’s touch is light, and his focus is minute. He treats each phrase as an end in itself, rather than a building block in a greater structure. The runs are exquisitely articulated and taken as fast as possible, and become trails of gold dust rather than sparks struck off an anvil. (Listen to the end of the first movement in the Fifth concerto, for example.)
