Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1 & 2 – Yevgeny Sudbin

   in Piano International (Sep, 2017)
Sudbin and Vänskä’s traversal through Beethoven’s piano concertos has been a backward journey: they started in 2011 in Minnesota with Nos 4 and 5 (BIS-1758), and added No 3 coupled with Mozart’s 24th in 2013 (BIS-1978). Their endeavour reaches port in Espoo, Finland, with the first two.

This is BIS’s third such cycle: others come from Elisabeth Westerholz back in the late 1980s; and more recently from the highly regarded Ronald Brautigam on fortepiano. There is even a chamber version coupling of Nos 1 and 2 featuring Fumiko Shiraga (BIS-1177) and an archival disc of Glenn Gould playing No 2 in Stockholm in 1958 (BIS-323). So this is familiar terrain for …