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These
performances of these immortal concerti were first
released in 1996, and at the time they were noted for their
musicianship and taste. Eight years hence, they still strike me as
being well-played and sympathetic performances, with stunningly
vivid recorded sound by Professor Johnson, Reference Recording's
in-house sound engineer. But one is likely to have at least half a
dozen of these concerti in one's collection even if one isn't an
fan, and ultimately these two performances, while good, don't quite
make it to the exalted levels of Mozart playing by Rudolph Serkin,
Edwin Fischer and Robert Casadesus, to name a few.
It's not that Istomin doesn't have his merits; in fact his musical,
understated approach will find many fans. But while Clifford Curzon,
in his Decca recordings, used this self-effacing approach to delve
deeper into the music, Istomin's playing feels surprisingly
uninvolved, coming alive, it seems, only in the cadenzas. The
performance isn't short of musical inflection, it's just that
Istomin's playing, while cultured, seems to be once removed from the
music, surprising for a chamber musician.
If one can get past the detachedness, there is much to enjoy - the
beautiful Istomin sound heard to best effect in his trio recordings
with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose, and on the part of the orchestra,
they play well under Gerard Schwarz, very well in fact, and Gerard
Schwarz accompanies attentively and coaxes beautiful sounds out of
the orchestra. But these cannot be prime recommendations.
For K467 I like the recordings by Clifford Curzon (Decca) and Annie
Fischer (EMI), for K491 Robert Casadesus with Dmitri Mitropoulos
show just how dramatic this music can be while staying Mozartian (Orfeo).
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