The Guardian gives a 4 star review to Leif Ove’s recording of Beethoven Piano Concertos nos 1 & 3
“Leif-Ove Andnes begins his cycle of Beethoven’s piano concertos, or The Beethoven Journey as Sony Classical insists on calling it, by pairing the two works in C: the major-key first concerto, and the minor-key third. He direct the performances from the keyboard – working with the marvellously responsive Mahler Chamber Orchestra must make such multi-tasking much easier – and they have the same sense of tidiness and attention to details like weight and balance that you get from Andsnes’s solo recitals. What these performances also have is a quality that is not always quite so obvious when he is alone on the concert platform – a real sense of enjoyment in playing, and the business of communicating that enjoyment to an audience. Whether it’s the purled-off runs in the first concerto or the dark ruminations of the development section of the Third’s opening movement, everything has its place in the bigger picture. The incidental beauties – the articulacy of Andsnes’s left hand is a marvel in itself, for instance – are all part of that, too.”
Source: The Guardian