Wilms - The Piano Concertos Vol.2
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Label: BIS
Cat No: BIS2524
Format: Hybrid SACD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Orchestral
Release Date: 2nd December 2022
Contents
Artists
Ronald Brautigam (fortepiano)Kolner Akademie
Conductor
Michael Alexander WillensWorks
Piano Concerto in E flat major, op.55Piano Concerto in F major, op.32
Artists
Ronald Brautigam (fortepiano)Kolner Akademie
Conductor
Michael Alexander WillensAbout
Born in the vicinity of Cologne, only two years after and some sixty km distant from Beethoven, Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once a musical force to be reckoned with. In Amsterdam, where he lived from the age of 19, his music was actually performed more frequently than Beethoven’s at one period, and his orchestral works were played in such musical centres as Leipzig. Besides chamber music and solo sonatas, Wilms composed several symphonies and concertos, among them piano concertos for his own use.
But already during his lifetime Wilms began to retreat from the public eye and by the time of his death in 1847, he was remembered almost exclusively as the composer of the then national anthem. In time for the 250th anniversary of Wilms’s birth, Ronald Brautigam has edited the five extant piano concertos by ‘the Dutch Beethoven’. A first volume (BIS2504) with the three earlier concertos has been released, earning a five star review in BBC Music Magazine for ‘performances of lightness and transparency, matched by the recording’s clarity.’ On this second and final instalment, with Concertos nos. 4 and 5, Ronald Brautigam again receives spirited support from the Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens.
But already during his lifetime Wilms began to retreat from the public eye and by the time of his death in 1847, he was remembered almost exclusively as the composer of the then national anthem. In time for the 250th anniversary of Wilms’s birth, Ronald Brautigam has edited the five extant piano concertos by ‘the Dutch Beethoven’. A first volume (BIS2504) with the three earlier concertos has been released, earning a five star review in BBC Music Magazine for ‘performances of lightness and transparency, matched by the recording’s clarity.’ On this second and final instalment, with Concertos nos. 4 and 5, Ronald Brautigam again receives spirited support from the Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Piano Concerto in F, op.32: 1. Allegro
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2Piano Concerto in F, op.32: 2. Adagio
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3Piano Concerto in F, op.32: 3. Rondo. Allegro
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4Piano Concerto in E flat, op.55: 1. Adagio – Allegro
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5Piano Concerto in E flat, op.55: 2. Adagio
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6Piano Concerto in E flat, op.55: 3. Rondo. Allegro
Europadisc Review
As well as exploring the vast solo repertoires of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (not to mention forays into Mendelssohn and Joseph Martin Kraus), the Dutch fortepianist Ronald Brautigam has struck up a fruitful artistic partnership with Michael Alexander Willens and his period-instrument Kölner Akademie. Together they have recorded the complete piano concertos of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Mendelssohn and Weber – the latter making (in our review of April 2021) ‘the strongest possible case’ for Weber’s relatively neglected works. In July this year BIS released the first disc from Brautigam and Willens exploring the even rarer piano concertos of the German-born Dutch composer Johann Wilhelm Wilms (1772-1847), which immediately won over critics and collectors alike.
Now comes the concluding Wilms disc, containing the last two of Wilms’s five published piano concertos (a further pair of documented but unpublished works have not survived). Like the first release, this confirms Wilms (born two years after Beethoven, and outliving him by two decades) as an inheritor and exponent of the Mozart-Beethoven concerto tradition. Despite living well into the Romantic era, Wilms – an accomplished pianist and flautist – had largely given up concert activities and composition in favour of secure employment as a church organist. So it’s no surprise that his concertos inhabit a very Classical musical world. The F major Piano Concerto, op.32, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1814, has the feeling of Mozart in ceremonial mood (though the trumpets and drums only emerge some way into the slow-burning opening tutti), something underscored by the woodwind writing (without clarinets), though Beethoven’s first two piano concertos are not so far away either.
Brautigam, using his favoured Paul McNulty fortepiano based on a Graf instrument of 1819, dispatches the filigree passagework with all the stylishness one has come to expect of him, and it soon becomes apparent that Wilms – who performed Mozart and Beethoven concertos for the Amsterdam public to considerable acclaim – writes with a warmth and tenderness worthy of his models, if not with quite the same individual stamp. The central Adagio, in the subdominant B flat major, is taken at a pleasingly flowing tempo, so that the solo figuration unfolds entirely naturally. But it is the perky concluding Rondo, with its cheeky concluding octave leap, moments of ‘a la Turca’ moodiness and even an exchange between soloist and light pizzicato strings, that contains the greatest delights, with Brautigam and his musical partners constantly alive to the music’s quick-wittedness.
The E flat Concerto of some six years later is evidence of yet further development. For a start, alone among Wilms’s piano concertos it includes clarinets rather than oboes in the orchestra, enriching the tonal palette. But the most obvious feature for many will be the Adagio slow introduction to the first movement, its cadential chords punctuating quasi-improvistary solos an obvious nod to Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto in the same key, a work which Wilms had probably performed. Still, as Wilms himself pointed out, ‘as we know, even though two movements may look quite similar, they can nonetheless, at least in the way they are worked out, be very different from each other.’ And so it proves, with a movement that combines moments of Beethovenian grandeur with a Mozartian sensitiveness that is rather beguiling.
In the latter stages of the substantial opening movement (at the 13:15 mark) there’s a passage of the most breathtaking pianistic delicacy (una corda, perhaps?), which is mirrored at 7:50 in the Rondo finale, this time with exquisite accompanying strings. Whether performers’ license or part of Wilms’s own conception, these are spellbinding moments that help to make this a disc of exceptional interest. The central Adagio, again at a nicely flowing pace, has an extra opulence and expansiveness to it, which might well be down to the warmth of the clarinets, and the solo part is one of unforced nobility. This is a composer, the listener feels, very much comfortable in his own skin, and that is a feeling that pervades this rewarding and fascinating disc as a whole. Recording and presentation are top-drawer, and it fully lives up to the promise of the first disc in the series.
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