Ludwig van Beethoven, Alexander Lonquich, Münchener Kammerorchester

On these three CDs Alexander Lonquich plays and directs all five of Beethoven's piano concertos with the Münchener Kammerorchester, in the order in which they were written. The sequence therefore opens with the Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 19, which predates the First, and closes with the Concerto No. 5 in E-flat, Op. 73. Heard this way, the cycle follows Beethoven from the young virtuoso of the 1790s to the composer of 1809. It is also the German pianist's most extensive ECM project to date.

Lonquich first appeared on the New Series in 2002 with premiere recordings of Gideon Lewensohn's music on Odradek. Two solo recitals and a duo programme with violinist Caroline Widmann followed. For the concertos he directs from the keyboard, as soloists did in Beethoven's time, with Daniel Giglberger as concertmaster and a modern instrument. The recordings were made in January 2022 at the Rathausprunksaal in Landshut, with Markus Heiland as engineer. In his own booklet essay Lonquich argues that the concert-hall habit of placing each concerto inside a symphony programme tends to confirm tradition, while chronological order exposes the stylistic leaps.

Disc one pairs the Second and First concertos, disc two the Third, Op. 37, and Fourth, Op. 58, and disc three is given to the Fifth. Writing for Südwestrundfunk, Christoph Vratz noted how single orchestral voices come forward like chamber music in the B-flat concerto. Lonquich's entry is light and singing, a Beethoven still close to Mozart. In Concerti he heard the energy rise with the Third Concerto, and followed the Fourth from its lyrical opening to its cheeky finale. Lonquich himself points to the cadenzas Beethoven wrote down for the first movements as a record of his own exuberant playing.

In Gramophone, Patrick Rucker found some of Lonquich's ideas apt and others eccentric, but concluded that the set offers "a great deal of fresh and stimulating thought". Bayerischer Rundfunk chose it as its Album der Woche. There Bernhard Neuhoff praised a breathtaking pianissimo and the way Lonquich, well informed by historical practice, joins its lean, sharp-edged sound to the colour of a modern Steinway.

This is the 3CD edition, ECM New Series 2753-55, released in November 2024 on ECM New Series, with Lonquich's liner note in German and English.