Mozart, W.A.: Piano Concerto 20 and Piano Concerto 23.

Mozart, W.A.: Piano Concerto 20 and Piano Concerto 23. Apollo's Fire Baroque Orchestra, with John Gibbons, fortepiano. Recorded in 2001 (#23) and 2002 (#20), at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Engineer: Tom Knab. 57+ minutes. Koch 7575.

As period instrument recordings go, this is a good one. The ensemble plays expertly, Gibbons performs equally well, and the ensemble reproduction is quite good. The hall acoustics are a bit on the dry side and of course the instruments sound a bit leaner than what one would encounter with modern instruments, but the overall sound is clean, clear, and detailed, with a workable soundstage. The piano (built in 1997 and patterned after a Walther owned by Mozart) is a bit too close up sounding and a tad vague in terms of center focus, but this is not all that big a deal. Call what we get here a front-row perspective.

Dolby Pro Logic II decoding (either via the RX-Z1 receiver in my main system or the Yamaha DVD-S1500 player temporarily installed in my middle system) radically transformed this disc. The piano dovetailed much better with the ensemble, and the listener was relocated to a prime-quality seat in a good hall. The Yamaha "classical/opera" DSP mode also worked well (at least with the center level backed off a bit), primarily because, as with DPL II, a center feed was derived out of the L+R phantom mix. Other Yamaha hall-simulation modes that did not employ the center channel were less successful, because the largish piano tended to bloat to overkill proportions.

The only problematic artifact that I had with this release was a low-level hall rumble that was made more obvious when surround DSP was applied. It then appeared to be coming from all around me. When I first heard it I thought some big trucks had stopped in front of my house and were idling their engines. Not the case, however. The rumble is not there all the time, at least.