Alexandre Tharaud - Mozart, Haydn: Jeunehomme (2014)

French pianist Alexandre Tharaud is known for programs that hold together only marginally, and so it is here: Mozart's French piano student who went by the name of Mademoiselle Jeunehomme (or Jenamy or Jénomé) is associated with only one of these works, and possibly not even with that one: she is said to have given the premiere of the sprawling Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, but the work has all the hallmarks of music Mozart wrote for himself. What you have here is a rather random collection of classical piano-and-orchestra music, with a neglected aria thrown in for good measure. This said, Tharaud stands out from the crowd of other pianists who have played this concerto. It's not so much the rest of the program: the rather plain Piano Concerto in D major, Hob. 18/11, of Haydn, or the two smaller obscure Mozart works. It's that the E flat concerto is really different. He performs with a well-established historical-instruments group, Les Violons du Roy under Bernard Labadie, but his approach on the piano is reminiscent of the old days with the major symphony orchestras: his sound is big, his phrasing expansive, his use of the pedal liberal. What makes this news is that he manages both to hold the music together and to make it fresh; Mozart recordings of this kind have a strong family resemblance, but Tharaud, as so often, is both spontaneous and logical. A novel and successful Mozart release, with strong sound from Quebec's Domaine Forget concert hall.