Solomon - Mozart Concertos and Sonatas

We have heard a great deal from Solomon in recent months, and for good reason - he was an exceptional pianist who played the classical and Romantic repertoire superbly.

Today we look into his 1952-55 Mozart discs, encompassing three familiar concertos and two sonatas. These are the entirety of his recordings of this composer, save for a 1943 sonata disc that I don't have. Solomon's career was cut short by a paralyzing stroke in 1956, when he was 54.

I transferred the Mozart works on this program from a 1970s reissue. The cover images you see below are from the original LPs. Scans of the reissue and the originals are in the download.

Concertos in A major, K488, and C minor, K491

Solomon's traversals of the Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K488, and No. 24 in C minor, K491, came on May 10-12, 1955 in Abbey Road Studio No. 1. Conducting the Philharmonia was Herbert Menges, a childhood friend of the pianist who was one of his favorite accompanists.

Solomon's biographer, Bryan Crimp, wrote, "Unlike his recent concerto collaborations in the studio with Kubelik and Cluytens, Solomon felt no sense of disappointment with any of these recordings. Much of their success can be attributed to the rapport Solomon enjoyed with Menges." He added that while Menges was not considered a top-rank conductor, "He was, however, a thorough and hard-working professional who was quite prepared to collaborate before the sessions, as is apparent in the resulting accompaniments."

The two works are contrasted - the A major being generally optimistic and the C minor powerful and dark. Solomon is fully up to the demands of the music, technically and artistically. The orchestra plays elegantly and the sound is very good, enhanced - as these all are - by ambient stereo.

Herbert Menges

The Gramophone's Robin Golding was in awe of the performances: "This is classical playing at its very best, with no suggestion of sentimentality or self-indulgence, yet with what Harold C. Schonberg (whose tribute to Solomon from his book The Great Pianists is reproduced on the sleeve) describes as 'an incomparable blend of intellect and heart', adding, 'It was an intellect which both respected the text and comprehended the architecture of the score; the heart inspired a lyrical warmth and a radiant generosity. The resultant performance was an act of genuine recreation.'"

He continued, "AP [earlier reviewer Andrew Porter] thought that Solomon’s account of K488 - one of the most familiar of all Mozart’s concertos, but one of the most difficult to bring off really convincingly - was the best he had ever heard, on records or off, and I am still inclined to agree with him. Here is a blend of delicacy and strength, of crisp articulation and a feeling for the long breathed phrase, which give to the first movement and the finale a suppleness and resilience that elude many pianists, while Solomon’s shaping of the wide curves of the melodic line in the Adagio is extraordinarily poignant."

Golding adds that the minor-key K491 is a worthy foil to K488: "strong and purposeful in the outer movements, but never melodramatic, wonderfully limpid in the Larghetto; and it is in this latter movement that the playing of the Philharmonia Orchestra ... and particularly that of its princely wind section, is to be heard at its superlative best."

Concerto in B flat major, K450, Sonata in A major, K331

The concerto in B flat, K450, is largely a sunny work, which may conceal its real difficulties for the soloist. Solomon, in his pearly perfection, does not give a hint that any of these passages are challenging.

This concerto recording, from 1953, comes from Kingsway Hall rather than Abbey Road, and has more spacious sound. The conductor here is the Romanian Otto Ackermann, then resident in Switzerland. He was another reliable leader who made a good number of records for EMI, often as accompanist.

The concerto has appeared here before, in a pressing issued in the US. This is a new transfer.

The Sonata in A major, K331, is one of the composer's most often heard pieces - at least the finale. It is the movement Mozart marked Rondo "alla Turca;" it is sometimes called the Turkish Rondo. The music echoes the distinctive sound of the Turkish Janissary bands, which was then (1784) in vogue. The style also can be heard in Mozart's 1782 opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, set in Turkey.

This Sonata and the K576 Sonata discussed below were recorded in 1952 in Abbey Road Studio No. 3. For the reissue, HMV coupled them on one 36-minute LP side, and in order to squeeze them both in, apparently sped up the tapes so that the music played quite sharp. I've adjusted the speed, hopefully accurately.

Sonata in D major, K576

The D major Sonata, K576 first came out on one side of a 10-inch LP, coupled with a Haydn sonata I don't have.

In The Gramophone Robin Golding wrote that the Sonata "with its taut, two-part contrapuntal writing, suits Solomon particularly well, and it provides an impressive tailpiece to a group of performances that are regrettably small in number though gigantic in stature. The mono recordings, like Solomon’s interpretations, do not seem to have aged at all." Nor have they 45 years later.

The sonata was Mozart's last. On the reissue LP it is identified as Sonata No. 17, but these days it is usually numbered No. 18. I've tagged the sonatas here solely by their Köchel catalogue number to avoid confusion.