The partnership of veteran German pianist Christian Zacharias and the German audiophile label MDG has yielded some treasures, but this one, part of a Mozart piano concerto series, is going to be hard to top. Recorded at the Salle Métropole concert hall in Lausanne, Switzerland, the discs in this series have inspired audiophiles to great flights of technical prose. The sound has warmth, depth, and awesome detail, and the music simply reveals no blemishes under its rays. The strings of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, of which Zacharias has been conductor since 2000, have the kind of sheen that comes only from a unit that has worked together over the long term. Zacharias has a way of making the listener seem privy to his thought processes at the keyboard; he is as smooth as the orchestra; without in any sense going off the rails, he can convey the way Mozart, once thought to be so decorous, can really shock at times: hear his entrance in the second movement of the Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453, where a langorous C major opening suddenly gives way to a dramatic G minor suggesting inner turmoil. Best of all is the ensemble work between soloist and orchestra, with an incredible range of shadings in the relationship. In the way Zacharias, who conducts from the keyboard, weaves in and out of the texture, you can almost sense something of the silver liveliness Mozart himself must have had in performing his concertos. Although MDG has specialized in historical instrument recordings and has done impressive work in re-creating sonic contexts for historically informed performances, the instruments used here are modern ones -- and the performances make a powerful case for the use of modern instruments. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of performances of these concertos available, but few can match these.
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