BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos: No. 2; No. 3 • François-Frédéric Guy (pn); Philippe Jordan, cond; R French PO • NAÏVE 5179 (60:05)

In Fanfare 32:2, I wrote a long review comparing five new releases of sets of two, three, and all five of the Beethoven piano concertos. One of these releases comprised the First and Fifth Piano Concertos by the artists in the present review. My 32:2 review was very favorable. I called that Guy/Jordan effort a must for all collectors (and I meant all listeners, as well). In Fanfare 32: 6, I reviewed the Fourth Piano Concerto by these artists, and I found that performance to be disappointing. The present disc includes the remaining two concertos of what is a traversal of the five Beethoven piano concertos.

Guy and Jordan are back on track here with two performances that are among the better available. The Second Concerto opens with an appropriately jaunty first movement and concludes with attractive Beethovenian humor. The middle Adagio movement is played with a distinctly andante tempo, and this is certainly a fault. The Third Concerto’s Largo second movement also suffers from tempos that are too rapid in places, but the outer two movements are exemplary in their C-Minor power and depth. The First and Fifth Concertos previously reviewed remain the best of the five by these artists. The rapid tempos of the slow movements of No. 2 and No. 3 are not so distracting that they disqualify this disc, because the virtues of the outer movements—uniqueness and appropriateness of interpretation, clarity of part-writing, phrase shaping, for example—still make this a disc worth having.

The Beethoven five present all collectors and listeners with the pervasive problem of having so many choices of what is among the greatest of classical music. Although there are preferable performances by Goode/Fischer (reviewed in 32:4), by Perahia/Haitink, by Serkin/Ozawa, and by Schnabel/Sargent (to name a few), this Guy/Jordan disc is still recommended for its unique contribution to the recorded literature.

FANFARE: Burton Rothleder