This release on the Onyx Classics label has no right to be as good as it is. Pianist Maria-Joćo Pires, 70 years old when the album appeared in 2014, has never been known as a Beethoven specialist. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding is a competent group, surely, but hardly on Europe's or even Scandinavia's A-list. The Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, and Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, hardly lack for varied and incisive interpretations. Yet there it is: this one delivers ...
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This release on the Onyx Classics label has no right to be as good as it is. Pianist Maria-Joćo Pires, 70 years old when the album appeared in 2014, has never been known as a Beethoven specialist. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding is a competent group, surely, but hardly on Europe's or even Scandinavia's A-list. The Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, and Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, hardly lack for varied and incisive interpretations. Yet there it is: this one delivers ideas that nobody else has offered before. In a nutshell, Pires makes the piano the quiet partner to a rather martial orchestra in these works. The Third Concerto loses its epic quality and has Pires offering gentle answers to the orchestra's turbulent phrases, with a slow movement that brings to mind Pires' true specialty: Chopin. The tempos are generally deliberate, and the long opening movement of the Piano Concerto No. 3 gives the feeling that every note fits into a larger...
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