But where things got really special was with the piano entry. The instrument is placed firmly in the soundstage, separate, big, solid, with a really convincing sense of presence and layered complexity. There’s a planted, temporal and dynamic authority to ABM’s playing, his left and right hands perfectly in sync but effortlessly separated., the power in the left perfectly balancing the dance-like, agile delicacy of the right. The extended runs have a seamless, unimpeded clarity, poise and evenness, his playing a fluid grace and temporal elasticity that deftly adds accent or impetus, the right hand punctuating the music while the left adds weight and foundation. It’s a masterful performance from soloist, orchestra and speakers. But in some ways, I’ve kept its most surprising aspect for last. The lucid clarity, separation, transparency and perfectly balanced weight and dynamics that brought this to life with such vivid immediacy and intelligibility was achieved using the Berning Quadrature-Z OTL mono-blocs. That’s right – an OTL driving a full-range ribbon-based panel. Okay, I accept that the Bernings aren’t exactly your average OTL: 220 Watts into an 8Ω load rising to 270 into a 4Ω load might not seem that impressive – until you consider that most OTLs halve their output into half the load. But even so, the Minuet’s ability to embrace and take full advantage of the Quadrature-Zs’ speed, agility and lucid transparency is remarkably impressive. Dynamics jump with a real snap while the bass is full, weighty yet also beautifully defined in terms of pitch, pace and purpose. The performance as a whole stands testimony to the near flat impedance of the Minuet and its ability to project weight and musical energy despite its modest sensitivity.
The same clarity and intelligibility that the Minuets bring to recordings serves to lay bare the differences between them. I’m not short of Beethoven piano concertos, with multiple complete cycles and individual performances. For this exercise I chose readings by Krystian Zimerman (with Rattle and the LSO), Jan Lisiecki (directing the ASMF) and Murray Perahia (with Haitink and the Concertgebouw). The ease with which the system revealed the core qualities and character of each performance was almost shockingly explicit, from the heavy-handed orchestral accompaniment of Rattle and Haitink, to the stilted, prissy playing of Perahia. After a slightly hesitant start (to this socially distanced recording) Zimerman delivered the expected precision and elegance, despite the hurried, cluttered, almost Mozartian style of Rattle’s orchestral playing, a lucid exposition of the solo part that offers clear access to the structure and shape of the piece.
But it is Lisiecki who get’s closest to the ABM ‘ideal’, his playing crisp, emphatic and purposeful, the backing of the Academy nicely weighted and sympathetic. He may lack the absolute grace and subtle mastery over pace and space of Benedetti Michelangeli, the master’s rhythmic fluidity and the control over note-weight and attack that invests his performance with such absolute authority, but Lisiecki has time on his side and his reading is bold and emotionally powerful in a way that neither Perahia nor Zimerman can match. However, what matters here is the unequivocal clarity with which the Minuets unwrapped these different performances. It’s a level of musical insight I’d expect from the Auditorium or the Avantgarde Trio G3. To get it from a speaker at this price level is frankly astonishing.
