Angus McPherson

Angus McPherson

Angus McPherson is a writer, editor and digital content specialist. He is a former Deputy Editor of Limelight and has written for BBC Music Magazine, RealTime Arts and CutCommon. A flute player by training, he holds a PhD in Music.

Articles by Angus McPherson

Orchestral
CD and Other Review

Review: Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 2 (Yevgeny Sudbin, Tapiola Sinfonietta/Osmo Vänskä)

On the final disc of Yevgeny Sudbin’s Beethoven concerto cycle with Osmo Vänskä, the Russian pianist gives a vivacious account of Beethoven’s first two published forays into the genre – Sudbin has been working backwards through the concertos. He’s accompanied on this release by the Finnish Tapiola Sinfonietta, rather than the Minnesota Orchestra, with whom he recorded the rest of the series. The First Concerto’s Allegro con brio is brilliantly articulate – every note is alive and charged with energy. Sudbin deliberately eschews Beethoven’s cadenzas in the first movement for one he describes as a “cocktail of material” based on one by Friedman – a shimmery, almost gushily romantic flourish that bounces into the final tutti. Sudbin traces crystalline melodies in the pulsing Largo and the Tapiola’s clarinet player draws clean lines in the prominent solo part. The finale barrels along with a relentless joy and a jocular cadenza (all Sudbin). The Tapiola’s sound is full and healthy – a little too healthy, perhaps, though this gives moments like the fugal section in the first movement of Piano Concerto No 2 plenty of heft. There are some dreamlike moments in the Adagio, before the comically bright Rondo caps off the…

August 18, 2017