Mikhail Pletnev, Russian National Orchestra, Christian Gansch - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3 (2007)

Listening to the thousand-and-one tinkerings that Mikhail Pletnev makes in the simple Concerto #1 of Beethoven, I was reminded that this quirky artist feels free to embellish any composer at will. One finds this trait either irritatingly intrusive or delightfully imaginative. There are days when I can't decide which. Here the overall results are undeniably appealing. We know that Beethoven improvised freely at the keyboard, and although Pletnev doesn't add new notes, he improvises the feeling of the music, tending toward a romantic sprightliness, if I can put it that way. He makes a phrase erupt, then whisper. He races around corners where other pianists don't realize that corners exist. No other living pianist, to my knowledge, dares to drive this way, with his hands off the wheel.

It's helpful that most of these expressive turns are on the micro scale. You won't hear gross distortions, and Pletnev's rubato isn't all that extreme (it comes close, though). The Concerto #3 is bigger and more romantic than the First, an entry into mature Beethoven, but Pletnev is light and playful in both works. In fact, he's outright droll in the finale of the Third, an effect achieved by no one else I've ever heard. I don't know his accompanist, Austrian conductor Christian Gansch (a 48-year-old former violinist with the Munich Phil. who became a DG recording executive), but he's good, if a bit colorless. Here in a lve concert from the Bonn Beethovenfest in 2006, Gansch gets warm playing from the Russian National Orch. All tempos are within normal range, and DG's sound is excellent despite a somewhat clangy paino.

It all adds up to a highly enjoyable reading of two familiar works that Pletnev hears in unfamiliar ways and executes with dash and elan.