Ten years ago, immersed in his project to record all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, Jonathan Biss began commissioning new works to pair with each of the composer’s five piano concertos. His recordings of these with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra reach their penultimate volume with the Concerto No 4 and Salvatore Sciarrino’s 15-minute Il sogno di Stradella, conducted by Omer Meir Wellber.
Biss’s tempos are unhurried in the concerto, and while his playing fizzes when Beethoven asks it to, this exuberance isn’t a constant undercurrent; the first movement sometimes feels a little episodic. Yet the tension in the middle movement between the belligerent orchestra and the serene piano is highly effective, and the finale, genial without being playful, has enough weight to balance it out. It’s a characteristically considered, thoughtful performance.
The Stradella in Sciarrino’s title refers to the free-living 17th-century composer who escaped assassination by one jealous nobleman, only to be murdered by another. Sparking off the sound of footsteps, the piano initiates a waltz-like tune, with one foot in a baroque church and one in mid-20th-century Paris – all with string harmonics evoking a haze of radio static. Even Biss can’t quite explain its link with Beethoven, but as an atmospheric vignette, it stands on its own.
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