Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos, Paganini Rhapsody
A Ukrainian pianist, sidelined in North Carolina, began filming herself at practice and uploading the videos online. Within four years, Valentina Lisitsa was the most-watched pianist in history with more than 40 million Youtube views. To the world at its screens, she is more famous than Horowitz and Van Cliburn combined. This, belatedly, is her first orchestral recording.She paid for it herself, hiring the London Symphony Orchestra, Abbey Road and veteran producer Michael Fine, flying over for three sets of meticulously planned sessions. Unable to afford a big-brand conductor, she made a virtue of necessity and shared her interpretative ideas by video with LSO player-turned-conductor Michael Francis to avoid wasting a minute of expensive studio time.The first thing that strikes you about this set is the pianist’s authority, her absolute conviction that each phrase can only be articulated in a certain way, her way. The assertiveness is most pronounced in the less performed concertos, the first and fourth, where she teases out subtle shifts that are commonly blown away in a blizzard of notes. The first concerto is played with a delicately calibrated rise of dynamic tension and the fourth with an empathetic and profoundly moving sense of irredeemable exile. In the C-minor concerto, she sidesteps melancholy and Brief Encounter romance to suggest a more innocent, hopeful kind of love, while in the D-minor she avoids tripwires at sensationally high speed, negotiating the tender Intermezzo without excess morbidity. The Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini turns into a bit of a romp, with the LSO in cracking form and Michael Fine delivering pellucid sound and perfect balance.Any pianist addressing these concertos has to overcome the composer’s 1920s recordings as well as those of his most-cherished interpreter, Vladimir Horowitz, and four more generations of brilliant performances. Bearing these monuments in mind, I find this the most compelling full set of Rachmaninov concertos since Vladimir Ashkenazy’s with Andre Previn 40 years ago, a recording that perfectly captures its moment. Both the orchestra and the label are the same. Sometimes, these things are no coincidence. A tradition is renewed.Three piano originalsGalina Ustvolskaya: 6 sonatas, 12 preludesPiano ClassicsA loner from mid-life on, Ustvolskaya turned down an offer of marriage from Dmitri Shostakovich and applied herself to writing hard-edged piano pieces of deceptive simplicity. She was present for these 1995 Moscow recordings by Ivan Sokolov and gave them her approval, but newcomers to her music might seek out more emollient performances.Hilding Rosenberg: Piano PiecesCapriccioThe first musical modernist in Sweden, Rosenberg (1892-1985) immersed himself in the 1920s in the Second Vienna School and shocked his countrymen with unsuspected atonalities. Played here by Ana Christensson, the music lacks Schoenberg’s passion or Webern’s rage. It is very Swedish in its moderation, and rather lovely.Billy Mayerl: Piano MusicSommThe premier piano syncopator of London’s 1920s palm courts, Mayerl (1903-59) was a finger wizard whose fun pieces were tinged with melancholy – a quality perfectly captured here by the Irish pianist Philip Martin. A little morsel titled ‘Wistaria’ sums him up to a tee. Listen to more than three short pieces and you won’t want it to end.___Norman Lebrecht is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and other publications. He has written 12 books about music, the most recent being Why Mahler? He hosts the blog Slipped Disc.
