This CD is part of the series Next Generation Mozart Soloists which documents young artists in Mozart concertos for various instruments. Eighth volume, it offers, after a splendid 3e Sonata by Brahms, the second recording by Jonathan Fournel, winner, in 2021, of the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium. He is an absolutely admirable and classy pianist that we hear here. The way in which Fournel manages, on a splendid Bösendorfer, the apparently nonchalant volubility of the finale of the Concerto K. 456 is dazzling, particularly in the articulation of the sequence of sentences. The same is true in the very operatic cantabile of 2e movement. Happiness continues in the 21e Concerto, K. 467, never rushed, with a winged charm, beautifully held. As is now the case most of the time (see also the Mozarts of Charles Richard-Hamelin), the downside is in the rigidity, objective and cold, of the orchestral framework, as if it had become a fashion to play Mozart as we would paint an old withered tree.
To watch on video