Beethoven Concertos for Piano Leon Fleisher pianist George Szell conducts the Cleveland Orchestra

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This review is from: Piano Concerti 1-5 / Triple Concerto (Audio CD)

Going on 40 years since they were recorded, Leon Fleisher's collaborations with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra on some of the greatest of all piano concerti, have gained legendary status among lovers of classical music... and for good reason. This collection of the complete Beethoven cycle gives ample proof of why this is so.

George Szell was one of the greatest of all 20th century conductors. Unfortunately, with the passing of time he has also become one of the most overlooked. Like Toscanini and Solti, Szell was one of the last of the great Apollonarian [?] conductors, whose goal it was to: "Play what is written, AS it is written." Toscanini and Solti both possessed an uncanny talent for getting their ensembles to play "over their heads" and transcend their individual and collective limitations. What Szell possessed was a better ORCHESTRA. By the time of these reccordings, Szell had built the Cleveland Orchestra into the finest in America at that time, and one of the very finest in the world.

In Leon Fleisher, Szell found the perfect, like-minded collaborator. These are probably the most disciplined and rigorous recordings of these great masterworks you will ever hear. In revisiting these familiar scores, Fleisher and Szell set out to discover NOT was unique or new or interesting to them, but rather what BEETHOVEN put into them. The result is to give the listener something of invaluable beauty: the closest thing to Beethoven's intent as is humanly possible. This is not to say these performances lack passion, intensity and emotion. Far from it! But the passion, intensity and emotion here are simply what the music requires, nothing more. What these recordings communicate primarily and with greatest impact is the GENIUS of Beethoven. Only later does one become aware of the genius of the artists, in their willingness to sublimate their egos in pursuit of that goal.

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