Academy of Ancient Music, Robert Levin, Christopher Hogwood - Mozart - Piano Concertos No. 22 & 23 (1998)

Robert Levin is perhaps the geekiest pianist on Earth, a truly nonchalant and intimate stage presence, simultaneously professorial and informal. I've know him to stop in the middle of a recital to explain why he's playing a passage in a certain manner. I've heard him invite members of the audience to suggest themes from Mozart's oeuvre for him to improvise upon. He is, if I can make my meaning clear, more a Musician than a Concert Pianist; he'd rather play a piece interestingly than perfectly. He's a speed demon, true, but he makes it seem quite likely that Wolfi was another. He really, truly does improvise his cadenzas, but of course any improvising musician knows that improvisation is more recollection than invention. Sometimes his improvisations hopscotch a tad too far, modulating toward Schumann or Brahms, but that's not the case on this CD. If Levin is irrepressible and impish, Christopher Hogwood is as serene and steady as the Habsburg Monarchy must have seemed in Mozart's lifetime. They make a successful 'marriage'. Levin is a much more resourceful and exciting fortepianist than Derek Han (whose recordings of the Mozart Piano Concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra are included in the Brilliant Classics Complete Mozart edition), and Hogwood is a more 'refined' conductor than Paul Freeman or several others of greater prominence.