Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, K.482 (1785)
Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K.595 (1791)
Peter Frankl (piano)
Cleveland Orchestra/George Szell (22), István Kertész (27)
rec. live, 5 January 1967 (22), 25 January 1973 (27), Severance Hall, Cleveland
Maestro Editions ME328 [65]

This release is a 90^th birthday tribute to the distinguished Peter Frankl, whose recordings on Vox, ASV and other labels have given many listeners huge rewards by virtue of their integrity and expressive eloquence, whether as a solo artist or in collaboration with such as Kyung-Wha Chung and the Lindsay Quartet.

Maestro Editions presents two Mozart concertos performed live in Severance Hall, Cleveland with two compatriots – George Szell and István Kertész, the first of whom sought out Frankl and enjoyed an unfractious collaboration with him (not always the case with Szell, of course), and the second of whom was a childhood friend in Budapest.

In the Concerto in E flat major, K.482 from January 1967 we have some welcome but brief pre-concert ambience before Szell directs a communicative, strongly defined reading, with typically tight ensemble and a welcome sense of communicative esprit. Szell is best-known from his commercial recording of this work with Robert Casadesus, though there’s a live broadcast with Badura-Skoda and the Concertgebouw in 1959. Frankl is gravely melancholic in the slow movement though one can appreciate his songful, rounded, rich tone as well as his poise and refinement. In the finale, Szell ensures that its operatic qualities are fully explored by the orchestral choirs, turning the music into a Viennese stage performance – bassoon, high winds, strings acting their vocalised roles with aplomb and Frankl his own with great eloquence.  

By the time of the performance of Concerto No. 27 in January 1973, Szell was dead and, tragically, Kertész was to die three months later. The Cleveland Orchestra was said to have wanted Kertész as their conductor and they certainly play for him with an uncloying warmth and articulacy. Frankl is once again poised and refined and dispatches the first movement cadenza with an expansive depth of tone not always captured in studio recordings. There are a few more audience coughs in this performance than in the earlier one but there is a similar buoyancy and wit in the finale, which receives a full quotient of applause, briefly retained. 

There is a good note by Roger Smithson housed in a digipack. This is a worthy salute to Frankl, catching him on the wing alongside two sympathetic but energising collaborators.

Jonathan Woolf