Mitsuko Uchida & Cleveland Orchestra - Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 17, K453 & No. 25, K503 (2016) [CD Rip]

For her fifth live recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra, Mitsuko Uchida presents the Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K 453, and the Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K 503, a delightful pairing that reflects her previous albums in this critically acclaimed series on Decca. Conducting from the keyboard, Uchida plays a modern Steinway in a conventional manner without any nods to period practices, though her refinement and elegance go a long way to make up for the lack of historically informed details. Instead, Uchida has developed her own approach to Mozart, which allows for personal interaction with the music and a degree of spontaneity with the orchestra that involves playfulness and expansive lyricism. Uchida's cycle with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra on Philips established her as a leading interpreter of the concertos in the 1980s and 1990s, but these later offerings have the feeling of revisiting old favorites, rather than reassessing the music in any dramatic way. A good track to sample would be the Andante of K 453, to which Uchida gives full expression of the music's beauty, in a performance that is both Classical in its lucidity and Romantic in its yearning. -- Blair Sanderson