So what makes the Matsuev / Gergiev account of the Second Concerto so special? The first movement, with its pages of bravura octaves and physically taxing solo passages, can often sound laborious for the soloist and laboured for the listener. Matsuev revels unapologetically in the display while artfully avoiding mere bombast and providing a nuanced, coherent shape to the whole, not without moments of puckish humour (un poco capriccioso says the score at 8’01”) and expressive elegance (11’37”). In the bedevilled Andante non troppo movement I should mention in particular the mellifluous violin and cello soloists (uncredited in the booklet), though the former is a noticeably heavy breather. Tchaikovsky’s sublime melody is played by them heart-onsleeve, with Matsuev, when he takes up the theme, underlining its elegiac quality with exquisite tenderness. Matsuev and Gergiev opt for the second of the composer’s two versions of the ending, cutting (the redundant, in my opinion) bars 310-26 and coming in again seven bars before the end. The finale is a riot as it should be and, with scintillating energy, brings to a conclusion this must-have release. Two five-star recordings, so to speak, on one disc.
April Editor’s Choices
RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR
CPE BACH Magnificat Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin / HansChristoph Rademann Harmonia Mundi F HMC90 2167 The second superb CPE Bach disc to make my Choice in his anniversary year. Rademann drives forwards both choral and orchestral music with clarity and energy.
BRUCKNER Symphony No 9 London Symphony Orchestra / Bernard Haitink LSO Live B Í LSO0746 ‘Great music-making,’ concludes David Gutman, and so it is: a deeply considered, powerful presentation of (the three movements of) Bruckner’s final thoughts.
AR THOMAS Orchestral Works Nimbus F NI6258 This survey should help draw deserved attention to the American composer Augusta Read Thomas, two of whose champions – Boulez and Knussen – here give her music compelling advocacy.
WEINBERG Symphony No 10, etc Gidon Kremer et al; Kremerata Baltica ECM New Series M b 481 0669 Exploratory, experimental and urgently communicative, all attributes David Fanning notes of Kremer’s Weinberg, and ones I strongly second.
‘1930s VIOLIN CONCERTOS, Vol 1’ Gil Shaham vn Canary Classics M b CC12 A generous offering of music, and performances generous in spirit too, whether in the lyricism of Samuel Barber or the mysteriousness of Karl Amadeus Hartmann.
LANGGAARD String Quartets, Vol 2 Nightingale Quartet Dacapo F Í 6 220576 ‘To call the second volume “eagerly anticipated” would be a massive understatement,’ said our critic of Vol 1 (6/12). Well, here it is, both drama and delicacy every bit as beautifully explored.
Puckish and playful: Denis Matsuev plays Tchaikovsky
‘JACOBEAN LUTE MUSIC’ Jakob Lindberg lute BIS F Í BIS2055 The intimate colours of the lute are beautifully caught in this recital of early-17th-century English and Scottish works – a ‘terrific release’, says William Yeoman.
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SCHUBERT Winterreise Gerald Finley bar Julius Drake pf Hyperion F CDA68034 Gerald Finley’s ability to completely inhabit the complexity of a character is just as true here as in opera: an intense and ultimately moving Winterreise.
SHEPPARD Sacred Choral Music Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh / Duncan Ferguson Delphian F DCD34123 The exquisite singing here is remarkably direct and beautifully shaped: a striking disc which makes a strong case for the music of John Sheppard.
GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2014 13
