Page 474 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

but later came to realise that it was mostly a lyrical work. His performance on this
release – which completes a rewarding Beethoven concerto cycle with Vasily
Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra – holds these aspects in
perfect balance, as two stages on a continuum rather than flipside opposites.

Giltburg doesn’t deal in pianistic thunder but in long phrases and in unsignposted
details of articulation, and in both concertos he and Petrenko generally draw out the
contrasts and drama with a certain amount of subtlety. It’s a striking moment,
therefore, when in the slow movement of the Concerto No. 4 the orchestra’s strings
sound suddenly so belligerent, the piano floating serenely above them. The cadenza
to this movement, with its chromatic gestures around a sustained trill, registers as
jarringly as Giltburg intends, yet even here he doesn’t resort to harshness of tone for
effect, or even to a real fortissimo.

Petrenko has the orchestra sounding rich and substantial but that doesn’t preclude
some crisply exuberant playing in the finales, or some appealingly open-sounding
woodwind, especially the clarinet and bassoon solos in the last movement of No. 3.
This solid recording may not be quite distinctive enough to stand out in a crowded
field; but if it were the only one in your collection you wouldn’t be doing at all badly.

Erica Jeal