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Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 9 and 24. Lars Vogt, piano and conducting Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. Ondine. $16.99.

Gwyn Pritchard: Realms Apart; Calling; Features and Formations; From Time to Time; Nightfall; Res; Evolution; Tide. Asia Ahmetjanova, piano; Ensemble ö! conducted by Francesc Prat. Métier. $18.99.

     It is very, very rare that an artist gets to select his own legacy in the full knowledge that it will indeed be his legacy. Lars Vogt was put in that profound and unenviable position after he was diagnosed in February 2021 with cancer of the throat and liver. He continued to play while undergoing chemotherapy, but his condition steadily worsened until his death on September 5, 2022. He would have been 52 years old on September 8. Despite the emotionally wrenching circumstances, Vogt decided to turn, in the months after his diagnosis, to piano concertos he had not recorded before – ones with deep personal meaning for him. Thus, in April 2021, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 9 and 24 as soloist and conductor with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the ensemble he had headed since 2019. He did not live to hear the finished version of the recording he made at that time, which is now available on the Ondine label. But it most definitely stands as an important part of his legacy, even though he was best-known for performing Romantic music, especially that of Brahms (in his very last concert, on June 26, 2022, he played Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3).

     Vogt gives Concerto No. 9, written in 1777 when Mozart was 21, an unusually mature performance, despite the work’s usual title of “Jeunehomme.” The first movement starts with an amazingly transparent opening, as if played by a small chamber ensemble – although the orchestra has more than 40 members. There is tremendous delicacy here, with the pacing relaxed and unhurried, as if friends have gotten together to enjoy performing a much-loved work. The strings’ clarity is exceptional. The palpable eagerness of the pianist to enter, a little "too early" according to traditional notions of structure, comes through as a moment of pure joy. Although he uses a modern instrument, Vogt plays with such restraint that the sound recalls the much lighter sonority of pianos of Mozart's time. The limpidity of the performance is exceptional. All is delicacy here: there is no sense of assertiveness, much less competition – always cooperation. The second movement, in C minor – which was to become the home key of Concerto No. 24 – sounds subdued rather than dark. Soft passages are remarkably clear – in general, the dynamics get extremely close attention. Vogt is always primus inter pares, first among equals. There is beauty and gentleness here, but the music is crepuscular rather than dark. The cadenza sneaks in slowly and quietly after an extended full stop, expanding only gradually into a solo exploration of the movement's themes and moods. Held notes and pauses go on just a bit longer than usual, enhancing the thoughtful mood. The finale starts with an exuberant piano opening that nevertheless pays very careful attention to each individual note. Give and take between solo and ensemble are well-balanced, and insights abound, as when the pianist’s two hands seem to go into question-and-answer mode about a third of the way through the movement, while the orchestra is briefly silent. The slow minuet introduced mid-movement sways gently and brings a touch of expansiveness and thoughtfulness to what is otherwise light and bright music, much as a similar section would do in Concerto No. 22 eight years later. Then the return of the original tempo sweeps away any hint of solemnity into a concluding section imbued with playfulness.

     Concerto No. 24, which dates to 1786, also opens with a very slow emergence from quiet, but the first tutti is quite emphatic, with strong brass emphasis accentuating its seriousness. The orchestra proffers well-accented rhythm and good flow, but then there is a slight extra pause before the piano’s entry and slight hesitancy when it does come in, as if emphasizing a kind of existential uncertainty. This becomes a pattern: when the piano re-enters after a silence it waits just a breath (or part of a breath), as if gathering itself for what is to come. The result is music that is dark-hued but not tragic. Vogt’s determination not to overemphasize the piano's lower register is an excellent decision, in keeping with the sound that Mozart would have expected: it avoids making the music more dour or over-dramatic than it really is. Notably helpful is the clarity, not rumbling, in the bass register. The careful tentativeness of the piano entries becomes an expected characteristic as the movement progresses, but there is nothing at all tentative about the playing once soloist and orchestra join. Vogt's cadenza (Mozart did not leave one for this movement) is sweeping, emphatic and extended, and incorporates some of the more-delicate material as well as the more-determined music. The reentry of the orchestra, without the usual end-of-cadenza trill, is unexpected and compelling, and the movement's quiet ending seems almost a surprise. The second movement is nicely paced, close to andante rather than larghetto as marked. It is clearly a respite from the strength and melancholia of the first movement. Here the winds are nicely highlighted, and they lighten the sound effectively. This is a tranquil movement standing between two that are anything but calm. The presentation is light but not airy, an exchange of pleasantries between soloist and ensemble. As the finale begins, the repeated falling intervals of the opening change the mood immediately. Now the winds serve to accentuate the emotional depth of the music, and the piano's communicative clarity is at the service of drama. Vogt is emphatic without ever pounding the keys or overusing pedal effects. The gentler intervals within the theme-and-variations form serve both to contrast with the more-intense material and to highlight it. The insistence on C minor for the conclusion (a strong contrast to the sunny ending of Mozart’s other great minor-key concerto, No. 20) keeps the music insistently meaningful, the last notes resonating conclusively and leaving behind a kind of dark thoughtfulness, more like Milton's Il Penseroso than anything genuinely despairing. As a testament to the thoughtfulness and stylistic excellence of Vogt’s pianism, this recording most definitely stands as a worthy monument to a pianist/conductor taken all too soon from the musical world.

     The piano is part of a tribute of a different sort on the Métier label – to Gwyn Pritchard (born 1948), in recognition of his 75^th birthday. Three of the eight pieces on the disc are for solo piano, featuring Asia Ahmetjanova. The other five works are ensemble pieces in which Francesc Prat conducts the Swiss contemporary group called Ensemble ö! The exclamation point, part of the group’s name, fits well with its handling of Pritchard’s music, which has an exclamatory feeling about it that will certainly not be to all tastes but that gives every work an underlying (if not overt) feeling of intensity. The three piano works here are Calling, From Time to Time, and Tide. The first of these contrasts long-held single notes with runs and clusters; the second changes direction in unpredictable ways on the keyboard, with Ahmetjanova’s hands running in parallel or contrary motion at different times; the third starts with individual notes and explores the realm of quiet and delicacy to a greater extent than do the others. The sound of the ensemble pieces on this (+++) CD contrasts strongly with that of the solo piano. Realms Apart mingles deep, slow-moving tones with fast-moving, high-register ones. Features and Formations sounds constantly anticipatory, as if leading listeners to an undiscovered country to which the journey will be difficult but ultimately worthwhile – although there is never truly a sense of arrival anywhere. Nightfall really does sound at first as if something has fallen heavily, but the work then becomes a series of well-differentiated sounds punctuated by extended silences. Res has a sense of cloudlike evanescence punctuated by individual sounds. And Evolution intersperses silences with exclamations of varying degrees of emphasis from varying instrumental combinations. This CD, which consists entirely of world première recordings, is not and will not be the last word on Pritchard’s music, but it stands as a fair introduction to his compositional methods and his interest in bringing sound out of silence and then finding multiple ways to contrast those two compositional elements. The audience for this contemporary music may not be a large one, but those who are members of it will find this collection of Pritchard’s piano and chamber works a worthwhile exploration.