| Review by Audiophile.no February 15, 2014 (6 of 6 found this review helpful)
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On this disc Martin Helmchen is solist with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Gordan Nikolic. It is a hybrid multichannel SACD, released on PentaTone Classics. Martin Helmchen has chosen piano concerto no. 15 and 27, or maybe someone has chosen them for him? Anyway this is not his first recording with piano concertos by Mozart at PentaTone, and something tells me that it is not the last.
The sound on this recording is excellent, a multi-channel mix that is rather conventional when compared with some other approaches I've listened to lately from 2L and TACET, but which nonetheless are very close to the musicians, and gives the listener an excellent listening position in a highly transparent and dynamic sound.
Martin Helmchen has a highly rated full play, with a heavy atack that constantly causes a marked and occasionally close to staccato performance. This gives me an immediate association to performances on the forte-piano, but of course only a little touch of this direction. Yet, experiencing this quality that Helmchen`s playing might be said to be more close to the original performances. Put another way, one may also say that Helmchen has a distinctly masculine textures in their playing.
The second and equally interesting quality with Martin Helmchen`s playing is that this masculine attack is combined with a brilliance and playfulness that seems almost incredible. And in the quiet 2. movements, there is a sensitivity that appears as an almost magical impossibility in combination with the masculine attacks he uses. This is particularly true in the Andante no.14, but also on the Larghetto from Mozart's last piano concerto. There is a soft playfulness as it is easy to attribute that youthfulness.
This review is an extraxt of a review i wrote and published at www.Audiophile.no, where this record is reviewed together with a stereo CD of two different Piano Concertos, performedby Christian Ihle Hadland and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.
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