Marios Papadopoulos, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Stravinsky - Concerto / Janáček - Capriccio & Piano Sonata (1985)

Marios Papadopoulos plays Janacek's sonata with a gentle, romanticizing melancholy that is nature can well encompass, even if such an approach can diminish the work's sense of tragedy. It is a work with a tougher core than is here suggested. However, this is not an unattractive performance, and Papadopoulos seems more attuned to its manner than to the crisp assertions of the Capriccio or of Stravinsky's Concerto. It does not seem a good idea to attempt the Capriccio without a conductor. The admirable RPO players sound less than wholly comfortable, and their ensemble is a trifle precarious at times; moreover, the work's odd, sharp character does not emerge with sufficient definition.
Something of the same is true of the performance of Stravinsky's Concerto, a work whose brusqueness here loses something of its strength. The balance in both works is tricky: the engineers have done well in the Capriccio, but there are places in the Concerto, especially near the start, where the piano is not sufficiently defined.'