Piano Concertos No. 11-13

From new cadenzas to Mozart's piano concertos
On the Alba company's new album, Danish pianist Katrine Gislinge plays three Mozart piano concertos together with the Stenhammar string quartet. The orchestral parts were arranged for the string quartet by Mozart himself, so there is nothing special about it. But the thing is that the cadenzas for the concerts were composed by Gisling's husband Bent Sörense. Fortunately, Sörensen has both the experience and vision of weaving his own music into the holiday of old masterpieces. The neat but somewhat barren record gets a delightful edge from the new cadences.
Mozart's early piano concertos No. 11, 12 and 13, composed in Vienna, are reduced in tone and effects, and the composer himself recommended them for home use as string quartet versions. The musical ideas of the concerts are conveyed without the colors of the woodwinds and the dynamics of the orchestra, but even the pride of Sweden, the sonically flawless Stenhammar Quartet, feels naked in the opening and interludes of the concerts. A muffled bass and bigger sections would fill the contours of the music with colors and cover up small irregularities, such as the intonation difficulties of violins' octaves and unisons. Rhythmically, the playing is precise but not perfect - for example, the prelude to the thirteenth concerto searches for swing for many measures, and when it is found, the soloist enters with head-turning lines, and the rhythmic wavering does not stop there. A piano quintet is capable of greater precision than a soloist and an orchestra, but there is a reason, because in Mozart everything is heard.
With the quartet, pianist Katrine Gislinge seems to be playing herself more as a chamber musician than a soloist: she takes fewer liberties and serves up less flair. However, the playing is immaterial, bright and alive on a micro level, which prevents the album from slipping into bourgeois home music. Finally, the bourgeoisie is vented from the record in the cadenzas of the concerts. Sörensen says that trying to match Mozart's perfection with one's own tunes was difficult, but gradually a solution was found. He listened to Gisling's Mozart practice while writing his own music cleanly, and, oh boy, gradually the musics came together. Perhaps because of this background, Sörensen's cadenzas explore the material of the concerts concretely, through repetition and association, just as a musician practices. The cadenzas are not virtuosic, but they bring the pianism and musicianship elegantly to the surface in music that might otherwise seem impersonally classical. Every time Mozart seamlessly transforms into Sörensen, the album's motif becomes clearer, and 18th-century home music becomes relevant even in modern times. And as soon as Sörensen has used this effect, he shows his maturity by returning without delay to Mozart. W. A. Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 11-13. Cadences: Bent Sörensen. - Katrine Gislinge, piano, and the Stenhammar Quartet. (Alba, ABCD 418) New records 24/04/2018, edited by Kare Eskola.

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 11-13 [https://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Piano-Concertos-Nos-11-13/dp/B07CXFK8C1]