Alexandre Tharaud, Les Violons du Roy, Bernard Labadie – Mozart, Haydn: Piano Concertos (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:56 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics
Alexandre Tharaud returns with an album of music by Haydn and Mozart composed between 1777 and 1786, including the latter’s masterpiece the Piano Concerto No.9 ‘Jeunehomme’ widely regarded as one of his greatest contributions to the genre. The piano works are elegantly woven together: while Tharaud performs Mozart’s cadenzas in the Piano Concerto No.9, the pianist has written his own for the Rondo in A – employing themes from ‘Jeunehomme’ – as well as for the Haydn concerto in which he uses motifs from Mozart’s famous Rondo ‘Alla Turca’ to give a truly Eastern European flavour to the work that seizes on the spirit of its final-movement Rondo all’Ungherese. The album sees Tharaud reunite with old friends: the award-winning French-Canadian chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy under the baton of their music director Bernard Labadie, and the outstanding mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in Mozart’s concert aria ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te?’.
French pianist Alexandre Tharaud is known for programs that hold together only marginally, and so it is here: Mozart’s French piano student who went by the name of Mademoiselle Jeunehomme (or Jenamy or Jénomé ) is associated with only one of these works, and possibly not even with that one: she is said to have given the premiere of the sprawling Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, but the work has all the hallmarks of music Mozart wrote for himself. What you have here is a rather random collection of classical piano-and-orchestra music, with a neglected aria thrown in for good measure. This said, Tharaud stands out from the crowd of other pianists who have played this concerto. It’s not so much the rest of the program: the rather plain Piano Concerto in D major, Hob. 18/11, of Haydn, or the two smaller obscure Mozart works. It’s that the E flat concerto is really different. He performs with a well-established historical-instruments group, Les Violons du Roy under Bernard Labadie, but his approach on the piano is reminiscent of the old days with the major symphony orchestras: his sound is big, his phrasing expansive, his use of the pedal liberal. What makes this news is that he manages both to hold the music together and to make it fresh; Mozart recordings of this kind have a strong family resemblance, but Tharaud, as so often, is both spontaneous and logical. A novel and successful Mozart release, with strong sound from Quebec’s Domaine Forget concert hall. –AllMusic Review by James Manheim
Tracklist:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1991)
Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat Major, K. 271, ‘Jeunehomme’
1 I. Allegro 10:32
2 II. Andantino 11:12
3 III. Rondo (Presto). Alla breve 09:18
4 Rondo in A Major, K. 386 09:31
5 “Ch’io mi scordi di te? Non temer, amato bene”, K. 505 10:25
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Piano Concerto in D Major, Hob XVIII:11
6 I. Vivace 08:21
7 II. Un poco adagio 07:26
8 III. Rondo all’Ungarese 04:12
