MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 20; BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 – Mindru Katz, piano/ Jerusalem Sym. Orch./ Gary Bertini (Mozart)/ Mendi Rodan – Cembal d’amour

by | Dec 29, 2011 | Classical Reissue Reviews

MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466; BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37 – Mindru Katz, piano/ Jerusalem Sym. Orch./ Gary Bertini (Mozart)/ Mendi Rodan – Cembal d’amour CD 163, 69:24 [Distr. by Qualiton] **** :
Producer Mordecai Shehori issues two new live concerto collaborations by his eminent teacher, the Romanian virtuoso Mindru Katz (1925-1978), recorded in Jerusalem 13 January 1970 (Beethoven) and 7 January 1977 (Mozart). The Beethoven C Minor Concerto takes its cue more from Mozart’s concerto in same key, K. 491, than from the K. 466, but the dramatic urgency remains the same.
With conductor Gary Bertini (1927-2005), we have two musicians deeply engrossed by architecture as well as the articulation of phase, and the result has the sturm und drang D Minor Concerto moving between intensely personal moments of tragic wisdom and a grand emotional plane where colossal forces that fight by night find redemption in the following day.  The opening Allegro reveals superbly elastic phrasing from Katz, ushering in sweeping lines from Bertini and the orchestra that never lack for both luster and warmth. The upward propulsion by Katz impels the recapitulation to an ineluctable pause prior to his alternately coaxed and imperious cadenza, its brief canons and singing legatos mixed into a lulling alchemy. Bertini is right there on the beat with a demonic re-entry of the tutti for a furioso coda at once potent and mysterious.
Rarely has the B-flat Major Romanze so effectively revealed its five-part rondo form in such glowing, pearly colors. Katz here approaches Gieseking for sheer, diaphanous sonority. The G Minor central episode combines dark, galloping drama and flights of poetically balanced chromatic phrases. The storm subsides, the woodwinds intervene, and the sunny idyll returns with refreshed, music-box serenity. Thunderous Mannheim Rockets from Katz in a D Minor fury from Bertini announce the Rondo, a lion that succumbs to the D Major lamb, but not before some hearty transition passages in A Minor and G Minor. Katz’s thoughtful last movement (Beethoven) cadenza, rife with arch trills in several octaves, takes us to a bassoon orchestral entry and tumultuous coda for all of its D Major brilliance.
The Beethoven Third Concerto pairs Mindru Katz with the perennial master of Israeli conducting, Mendi Rodan (1929-2009). From the outset, Rodan emphasizes both the lyrical as well as dramatic contours of the C Minor Concerto, arguably the first major composition in the so-called “second period” of Beethoven’s musical evolution. This performance generously provides us another Beethoven concerto with Katz, given his commercially recorded “Emperor” with Sir John Barbirolli (on Cembal d‘amour CD 148). Katz takes the first movement Allegro con brio rather expansively, lingering on Beethoven’s arioso passages and equally basking in the runs and broken-chord passages that seem to transpose aspects of the Waldstein Sonata to the concerto medium. Bold, articulate passagework makes compelling listening, and Katz’s runs become object-lessons in themselves. The cadenza proves colossal, a testament to digital, dynamic, and color control of seamless authority. The little light trills alone make me wish we had Katz in the Beethoven Choral Fantasia. A timeless space occurs at the entry of the tympani for the rousing coda.
Few pianists do with the first two notes of the Largo what Katz does, that is slow the beat down and transform the piano solo into either the opening of the Pathetique Sonata or a precursor of the G Major Piano Concerto. Rodan’s forces fall directly into step, and the Largo becomes a romantic song consonant with the slow movement of the B-flat Symphony. The extended vocal line Katz holds in taut and flexible thrall throughout, a dramatic coup in its own right. The Rondo features boisterous interplay between Katz and Rodan, including scintillatingly effective violin articulation from the Jerusalem strings. In the lighter figurations, Katz indicates how he might have negotiated the speedier Liszt Transcendental Etudes and the Grieg Concerto. We already know the kinds of rocketry he brings to the Tchaikovsky B-flat Minor. By the last chord of the Beethoven, Katz has audience eating out of both hands.
The portrait of Katz on the album cover, with Katz surrounded by adoring fans, reveals a man hearkening to a voice beyond the concert hall.
—Gary Lemco

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