The Mozart readings of German pianist Martin Helmchen have a reserved quality that at first hearing makes them seem overly careful and by the book. The dynamic range of the whole is not great, and Helmchen, though he plays a modern piano, favors the small ensemble and the transparent textures of the historical-performance movement. But focus a bit more closely and their particular characters emerge. On this release, Helmchen's second of Mozart concertos, Helmchen differentiates the two concertos substantially rather than ...
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The Mozart readings of German pianist Martin Helmchen have a reserved quality that at first hearing makes them seem overly careful and by the book. The dynamic range of the whole is not great, and Helmchen, though he plays a modern piano, favors the small ensemble and the transparent textures of the historical-performance movement. But focus a bit more closely and their particular characters emerge. On this release, Helmchen's second of Mozart concertos, Helmchen differentiates the two concertos substantially rather than applying a standard Mozart concerto mode, and for this alone the album is worth hearing. In the lovely performance of the Piano Concerto No. 15 in B flat major, K. 450, Helmchen adopts an almost liquid texture, focusing on the spaces between the notes. Most unusual is the Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595, where Helmchen rejects the supposedly death-haunted sort of innocent transcendence loaded onto this work by the Romantics. Instead, in his hands, Mozart is depicted as...
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