The Beethoven Journey, the rather grandiose name for Leif Ove Andsnes’s cycle of the piano concertos, ends with this pairing of the Emperor Concerto with that perpetually teasing curiosity, the Choral Fantasy. The Norwegian pianist’s many fans will be delighted; the rest of us, perhaps, might be left rather less moved. All the qualities that distinguish Andsnes’s playing – the clarity and perfect sense of weight and texture, the thoroughly musical phrasing, the immaculate manners – are obvious in every bar of the concerto here, just as what is lacking is clear, too: there’s no sense of discovery or of anything to be learned about the music from Andsnes’s interpretations. In fact, it’s the playing of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, wonderfully detailed and alive to every nuance, that lights up this account of the Emperor. The Choral Fantasy, though, is a surprise; there’s something unbuttoned and fresh, even witty about the give-and-take between piano and orchestra, which takes on a chamber-music like intimacy.
