BEETHOVEN • MOZART Beethoven Piano Concerto No 2 in

B flat, Op 19° Mozart Piano Quartet in G minor, K478b

Martin Helmchenpf bMembers of the Sine Nomine Quartet (Patrick Genet un

Nicolas Pache va Marc Jaermann ye); aSvizzera Italiana Orchestra / Lawrence Foster Cleves 0 CD50-2113 (55 minutes: DDD) Recorded live during the 19th Clara Haskil Competition at the Theatre de Vevey, Switzerland on September b9 and all, 2001

Enjoyable performances reveal a promising talent, if one yet to be fully realised

This disc includes two performances from the 2001 Clara Haskil Competition, Beethoven's Second Concerto taken from the final, Mozart's G minor Piano Quartet from the competition's semi-final stage. Martin Helmchen, who is 20 years old and hails from Berlin, is clearly a stylish Classicist and these performances are enjoyable if hardly revelatory. In the Beethoven Helmchen is crisp and lively in the outer movements, especially the finale, but the orchestral support is rather stodgy and is never fully integrated with the soloist. The lyricism of the slow movement feels rather forced, four-square in places, although there is a moment of magical repose, imagination and inward intensity at 723", to which the orchestra respond with a touching intimacy.

The highlight is the Mozart Piano Quartet, where Helmchen is more in balance with his partners, musically and sonically. The recording places the piano forward of the strings, but not at the expense of the musical partnership. This is a warm and involving performance, full of expressive detail yet sounding fresh and spontaneous, and the sense of live music-making really comes across. Nevertheless, with so much competition in both works this disc serves chiefly as a pointer to a young talent that is still taking shape.

Tim Parry