News

 MusicWeb InternationalClassical Music Recordings – Reviews and ArticlesHome » Beethoven: Piano Concertos 2 & 3 (Amchara Classical)Piano Concerto No 2 in B-flat major, Op 19 (1794)Egmont Overture, Op 84 (1809)Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor, Op 37 (1802-3)Niklas Sivelöv (piano)Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá/Joachim Gustafssonrec. live, October 2023, Auditorio Leon de Greiff, Bogotá, ColombiaAmchara Classical AMC017 [75]If the universal communicative power of music were ever in doubt; take a Swedish conductor/violinist alongside a Swedish pianist/composer, add a less well-known South American orchestra and record three cornerstone works of the Western Classical music repertoire. The fact that the results are as enjoyable and impressive as they are here is a tribute to the quality of modern-day music-making worldwide. Conductor Joachim Gustafsson is joined by compatriot Niklas Sivelöv in the second volume of a complete survey of Beethoven’s piano concerti. The orchestra is the main classical ensemble of Colombia’s capital city; the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá – Gustafsson has been their Music Director since 2021. As regular visitors to MWI might know, I am something of an admirer of the music and performers from South America. No surprise then to report that the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá play very well indeed – if anyone had a concern that in some way the playing might be unidiomatic or technically compromised this could not be further from the truth. The playing throughout this disc is alert, skilled, sensitive and wholly idiomatic so the listener can focus on the interpretative choices made. The very opening orchestral tutti of the Piano Concerto No.2 in B flat major Op.19 immediately shows just how well prepared and skilled this ensemble is – well judged in terms of tempo and ensemble and very well caught by the Amchara Classical engineers. The balance between ensemble and solo keyboard is perfectly judged and the scale of the performance ideally conveyed.I have not heard the earlier volume which comprised the 4th concerto plus the relative rarity of the composer’s own keyboard version of the Violin Concerto. Here we have the standard, but generous, coupling of the 2nd and 3rd concerti with the Egmont Overture an attractive bonus. Pianist Niklas Sivelöv has an extended discography alongside an impressive catalogue as a composer – his website lists some 32 recordings of diverse repertoire and 6 Symphonies, 6 piano concerti and 4 string quartets as just a few of his own compositions. Elsewhere on the same website there is a very good video of a live concert relay of the exact same music as presented on this disc. This is not the same performance as offered on the disc but it is all but identical in style and interpretation.The style chosen by Gustafsson and Sivelöv is modern instrument based but heavily influenced by Histroically Informed Performance practices. For the orchestra this means significantly reduced string strength with antiphonal violins, classical phrasing and minimal vibrato, the timpani in the third concerto sound as though they use hard sticks and generally all of the orchestral textures are kept light and airy. Although the instrument Sivelöv uses is a Steinway, reduced pedalling and a lighter touch keep the keyboard textures exceptionally clean and articulate. So skilfully does Sivelöv control this that more than once I did wonder if he was playing on a period reproduction rather than a modern concert grand. Additionally and alongside this technical aspect of his playing, Sivelöv favours an interpretative approach that is emotionally cool and objective. This of course reflects Beethoven’s debt in these earlier piano concerti to Mozart. The dividends are performances of unaffected beauty allied to clarity which pays especial dividends in the two central slow movements. I enjoyed the simple directness of Sivelöv’s approach although other players have found a gentler hushed wonder here. The quality of the orchestral accompaniment in these movements is once again genuinely striking. My only observation is that both finales loose an element of playfulness and wit with the rhythms having a clockwork accuracy that while admirable underplays the bubbling good-nature of the music. But there is no doubting the skill and precision of the chosen style.One passing curiosity given this HIP-influenced approach; in the second concerto first movement cadenza, Sivelöv chooses to play his own composed cadenza as opposed to the more familiar one by Beethoven. Nothing untoward per se about that except that Sivelöv’s version is stylistically somewhat different from the rest of the interpretative choices. For the third concerto Sivelöv does play the ‘usual’ Beethoven cadenza. Sadly, the less than adequate liner note makes no reference to this departure from the norm – clearly Sivelöv will have considered and carefully judged reasons for providing his own cadenza but neither the liner of anything online seems to be forthcoming about this.For listeners who enjoy the balance to be found in modern instrument performances in a historically aware manner these are genuinely fine performances – very well played and interpretatively convincing. My own personal preference is for a performance which looks ahead to the dawn of the Romantic Age rather than back to the end of the Classical, but in no way does that opinion diminish the value of these versions. The addition of a bracing Egmont Overture is an attractive if not wholly necessary bonus. The same HIP-aware practices are followed with a string strength of 10.8.7.5.4 (present on the video so presumably the same at the recording sessions) representing a decent Chamber-sized Orchestra as opposed to Symphony Orchestra scale. The liner does include the full playing strength of the orchestra listing 15 first violins and equivalent other sections. The result of this mid-scale group is an opening gesture that does not aim for the kind of impact that older-style large orchestras achieve. But as ever with this approach, weight is traded for nimble, alert and wonderfully articulate playing. Both here and in the concerti Gustafsson allows the music to phrase naturally and without artifice. In this he is supported by playing of real sensitivity and no little sophistication. If the opening trades power for precision the closing pages achieve genuine dynamic excitement with the rotary valve trumpets cutting through with thrilling effect. Again, do

Great review in Svenska Dagbladet by Erik Wallrup of Beethoven vol. 2″Sometimes perfection is an obstacle. Not in the case of Sivelöv. It is true that his extreme sense of touch and inventive mobility can be given more room without an orchestra, but he definitely also has the power and direction of the soloist. Attack is found in his entrance to the C minor concerto on the new record, poetic power in the slow movement and rhythmic life in the finale. A second concerto is on the disc, number 2 in B flat major, and there both soloist and orchestra show how musicianship can have freedom even in a work that has ended up in the shadows of the three grander ones, numbers 3–5.Just in the second concert, it is clear how everything is falling into place between the conductor and the orchestra. If any element is peculiar to the Bogotá Philharmonic, it is the rhythmic vigor. Sure, sonorously it’s just as it should be, and there’s a clear sense of the big form, but the vitality of the rhythm is so palpable. (The fact that the inserted Egmont overture becomes more melancholic than tragic must be placed in parentheses.)

Six heartsin Politiken for my Beethoven opus 2 on AMC/Amchara Classical!  “The professor, who has previously shown that he can interpret with the great romantic schwung, captures the essence of Beethoven by understanding and conveying how already in these sonatas strong l forces press on the music from within and push it forward with a hellish ferocity that is new and wild. A devilish madness that precisely makes the Viennese classic Beethoven point towards the following romanticism” Thomas MichelsenPolitiken 

This is the second volume in a series of three recordings from AMC with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Bogotá and Joachim Gustafsson conducting, which will be the first recording made in Latin America of all of Beethoven’s concertos for piano and orchestra, including the piano version of the violin concerto. On this recording the wonderful and dramatic Egmont Overture is also included.The 24-year-old Beethoven likely gave the first performance of the sparkling Second Concerto at a concert of Prince Lobkowitz, where his playing “touched everybody”. The young musician had the honour of performing the concerto later that same year with the esteemed Haydn conducting. It is a charming and delightful work, with a beautiful slow movement that must have shown off Beethoven’s noted cantabile style of playing, as well as a light-hearted, comic finale.The cadenza in the first movement is by Niklas Sivelöv.The Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor, Op.37 was generally thought to have been composed in 1800, although the year of its composition has recently been revised to 1803. It was first performed on 5 April of that year, with the composer as soloist, in a concert where the Second Symphony and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives were also premiered. The concerto was published in 1804, and was dedicated to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia.When the pianist–composer Beethoven moved to Vienna to study with Haydn, he confined his appearances for the first three years to soirees for the aristocracy, until he was satisfied he would make a spectacular debut both as virtuoso pianist and composer. At last, in 1795, he burst into Viennese musical life with his Piano Trios, Op.1 and his three Piano Sonatas, Op.2, the first works he considered worthy of an opus number. His shrewd judgement paid off: the young piano tiger and his compositions made an enormous impression.The Op.2 piano sonatas, the first of 32, are grounded in the Viennese Classical tradition of Mozart and Haydn, but already display Beethoven’s original voice. They move beyond eighteenth-century conventions in their key relationships, unusual modulations, dynamic contrasts, dramatic gestures and quasi-orchestral sweep. The first sonata is sometimes known as the ‘Little Appassionata’ for its key signature and the passionate Sturm und Drang mood of its outer movements. The second sonata, wide-ranging in its emotional content, moves further away from the eighteenth century in its plentiful unusual modulations, and the thirdsonata is virtuosic and grand in scale, unmistakably pointing towardsRomanticism.These three sonatas, which range over the entire keyboard, often with hands widely spaced, seem to strain at the confines of the fortepiano Beethoven owned at the time. Indeed the demands Beethoven placed on keyboard instruments with his 32 piano sonatas led to its substantial development already in his lifetime. At the end of his life Beethoven owned two much more advanced pianos, aBroadwood and a Graf, and in this recording Niklas Sivelöv plays a modern replica of a Graf piano.