Category: Music → Shostakovich - Piano Concertos No 1 & - No 2 [FLAC]

Tracklist:

1. Concerto for Piano no 1 in C minor, Op. 35 by Dmitri Shostakovich
Performer: Dmitri Alexeev (Piano), Philip Jones (Trumpet)
Conductor: Jerzy Maksymiuk
Orchestra/Ensemble: English Chamber Orchestra

2. Concerto for Piano no 2 in F major, Op. 102 by Dmitri Shostakovich
Performer: Dmitri Alexeev (Piano)
Conductor: Jerzy Maksymiuk
Orchestra/Ensemble: English Chamber Orchestra

3. Unforgettable Year 1919, Op. 89: Assault on Beautiful Gorky by Dmitri Shostakovich
Performer: Dmitri Alexeev (Piano)
Conductor: Jerzy Maksymiuk
Orchestra/Ensemble: English Chamber Orchestra


The First Concerto can live or die by its own parody. Overplay it, and it's about as funny as bad slapstick, treat it straight and it's mesmerising in its black humour, always within a hair's-breadth of crossing the line into sheer insanity. Dmitri Alexeev is a gruff but never harsh soloist, the trumpet-playing of Philip Jones apparently effortless, the ECO sounding anything but English (a tribute to their conductor). The Second Concerto is, on the surface at least, a far more amiable animal, though with Shostakovich things are never quite as simple as they seem. The second movement contains one of his best melodies, a veritable love-song, which Alexeev plays simply and affectingly. As a bonus, you get the Assault On Beautiful Gorky. Written for a patriotic film, it's a stylistic flashback to the romanticism of Tchaikovsky and Miaskovsky. And, as if any further incentive were needed, the disc comes at budget price. --Harriet Smith Amazon.co.uk Review

While these versions of the two Shostakovich piano concertos fall a shade short of the exuberance and sheer brio of their full price Hyperion counterpart they are much better than just creditable. A fixture of the budget catalogue since their appearance on Classics for Pleasure LP in the early 1980s they are well recorded and sprightly. The hoarsely urgent edge given to the French horns lodges in the memory. Alexeev is not, on this occasion, quite the magician that Marc-Andre Hamelin is on Hyperion CDA6742 but he has the necessary reserves of impudent humour and outright romance to make the two concertos sing. He is however more successful in the romantic stuff in the Second Concerto than Hamelin. If on the other hand you are not allergic to a rather grainy and close sound then do not miss the Hall of Fame version of the Second Concerto from Bernstein (conductor and pianist) on Sony. Alexeev’s sympathy for the romantic vein stands him in good stead in the swooning Tchaikovskianisms of The Assault on Beautiful Gorky; not otherwise widely available.