Olli Mustonen / Tapiola Sinfonietta BEETHOVEN Complete Piano Concertos

                                              BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTOS

Olli Mustonen / Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Hannu Lintu PROKOFIEV Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 3 & 4

This is the second and final disc in a cycle of Sergei Prokofiev’s piano concertos with pianist Olli Mustonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. Of the first volume, Gramophone wrote: 'How many times have I regretted a shortage of fantasy, flair and fairy-tale imagination in recordings of the Prokofiev piano concertos? Well, here is a disc that takes all those qualities to the top'.

Upon reading the score of the 2nd Piano Concerto before its premiere, composer Nikolay Miaskovsky wrote to Prokofiev: 'When I was reading through your concerto tonight, lying in bed, I went almost crazy with admiration: I jumped and cried out, so that if I had neighbours, they’d have probably thought I’d gone mad'. Prokofiev wrote this magical work just before World War I. The original score was destroyed during the Russian revolution, and Prokofiev had to re-write the concerto in 1923. Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 5 is completely different in nature than its predecessors. A stylistic change towards simplicity is evident in the work. Although Prokofiev considered naming the work 'Music for Piano and Orchestra' he produced in the end a challenging concerto that tests any soloist’s technique. Prokofiev himself gave the first performance in Berlin on 31 October 1932.

Pianist Olli Mustonen has recorded many works with Ondine, including Respighi’s Concerto in modo Misolidio with Sakari Oramo and the Finnish Radio Symphony and a critically acclaimed disc of Scriabin’s solo piano music. Recent recordings by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu on Ondine have been a fruitful collaboration, gathering excellent reviews in the international press.

Olli Mustonen / Isabelle van Keulen STRAVINSKY The Works for Piano & Violin

As Brahms had Joachim and Britten had Rostropovich, so, too, did Igor Stravinsky have a significant relationship with a performer who inspired an abundance of music. In Stravinsky's case, it was violinist Samuel Dushkin; the two collaborated together as performers, which resulted in the arrangement of several of Stravinsky's works for violin and piano. It also yielded the masterful and surprisingly lyrical Duo Concertante. The complete works for violin and piano fill two discs on this Newton Classics album featuring violinist Isabelle van Keulen and pianist Olli Mustonen. Equally at home playing standard repertoire as lesser-known modern works, and on the viola as well as the violin, van Keulen offers up some dazzling, nicely stylized performances of Stravinsky and Dushkin's collaborations. Her playing is fiery and brazen while still delivering some warm subtlety when called for in the score. The lyrical moments in Stravinsky's writing are played with a beautiful legato sound and effortless shifts. The well-known Suite Italienne is performed with moments of austere elegance, breathtaking beauty, and flashiness. Van Keulen and Mustonen form an exceptionally tight-knit ensemble wherein pacing, dynamics, balance, and musical intent are completely unified. Originally recorded in 1987-1988, Newton's sound on this is disc is admirably clean and simple. (Mike D. Brownell)

Olli Mustonen BEETHOVEN Diabelli Variations

This is, no doubt about it, an alternative view of the Diabelli Variations. It starts with what sounds like an intentionally parodistic view of the theme, with manically pecking staccatos in the right hand and predictable surges in the left, rather in the manner of an overenthusiastic amateur. Soon, however, it’s apparent that this kind of thing is going to be the norm; it’s simply Olli Mustonen’s natural, iconoclastic mode of delivery. Imagine someone playing on a heated keyboard with sore fingertips, and you’ll have some idea of his habitual clipped articulation and almost paranoid reluctance to sustain chords and melodic notes for their full notated value. That’s quite effective for the subdued bouncing chords of Var. 2 or the burbling bass figuration in Var. 3, and it’s interesting to hear, say, the dolce e teneramente of Var. 8 menaced by proto-Brahmsian fulminations in the left hand. Var. 25 is another winner: never mind the legato, feel the leggermente. All too often though, Mustonen only succeeds in evoking a world of punk-haircut grotesques. Var. 5 struts in a goose-step, the silences in Var. 13 are perversely non-witty, Var. 18 snatches at phrases like a nervous bird, and so on. Var. 33 is yet another tease; and I’m talking about that sublimely transfigured Tempo di menuetto.
Creative friction between composer and interpreter is all well and good, and certainly more interesting than slavish adherence to the text. But I feel that flights of fancy of the kind the young Finn is fabulously equipped to offer work best from a more humane basis. Remove that and you create mere freakishness. For some, Mustonen’s world-class clarity and agility may override such objections, and others may be able to detect a Gouldian alternative agenda I’ve completely missed. For myself I felt I could have been listening to a fine pianist who for some reason despised the Diabelli Variations and wanted to send them up. Of the many fine available versions, Kovacevich’s continues to give me the greatest satisfaction.
The five C major and minor short pieces work quite well as an appendix, though with a possible 33 minutes to fill, it might have been even more fun simply to make a clean sweep of Beethoven’s C major piano miscellanea. Recording quality is superb. (Gramophone)