Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.2 in Bb, Op.19 (Schwizgebel)
A wonderfully spiky and exuberant performance, practically thrumming with energy from start to finish. Part of this is the wonderful playing of the LPO under Thierry Fischer – its attacks (very noticeable in the first movement) are unusually aggressive, with a good deal of string buzzing caught up in the sound picture, and the strings and woodwinds are exceptionally perky and responsive (the woodwinds at times can even be a little astringent). But the other part of this really is Schwizgebel’s extraordinary playing – he has the very unusual and very Argerich-ian gift of being able to make the most ordinary figuration, be it a trill (23:26; 24:56) or a scale (22:45; 22:59), sound absolutely thrilling. His approach in the slow movement is pretty nice too – not a lot of rubato (with the startling exception of the very free recitative) but every line is shaped very cleanly, and the music preserves a lot of its inward momentum.