LISZT
/ SCRIABIN/ MEDTNER
POOM
PROMMACHART, Piano
Champs
Hill 104 / ****1/2
From the “Land of Smiles” comes this
ultra-serious recital programme by young pianist Poom Prommachart. He studied
in Singapore's Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and London's Royal College of
Music, and has won 1st prizes at international competitions in his
native Thailand, Serbia and England. The meat comes in two major works
celebrating the theme and variations form. Liszt's Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen is a formal edifice
built upon an austere motif from the Bach cantata of the same title, and closes
in a blaze of major key fireworks.
The other is Nikolai Medtner's Second Improvisation Op.47, a massive
half-hour'a meditation on The Song Of The
Water-Nymph with 15 variations which run the full gamut of a pianist's
technical armamentarium. There are not many recordings of it, and Poom's very
well thought out and paced account ranks high along with the best of them,
including Earl Wild and Hamish Milne's famous readings. The fill-ups are
Scriabin's Ninth Sonata (known as the
Black Mass), with its murky
necromancy balanced by the Rachmaninov's brilliant transcription of Fritz
Kreisler's Liebesfreud. This is an
impressive debut CD and excellent calling card for a rising musician with a lot
to say.
SHOSTAKOVICH
Piano Concertos
ANDREI
KOROBEINIKOV, Piano
Lahti
Symphony / OKKO KAMU
Mirare
155 / ****1/2
The two piano concertos of Dmitri
Shostakovich (1906-1975) are without doubt the lightest of his six concertos, and
are also among his most popular works.
The First Concerto in C minor (Op.35)
is unusually scored with solo trumpet and strings, a double comedy act with
both solo instruments cocking a snook at the classical conventions of Beethoven
and Haydn while channelling popular cabaret and dancehall music. Its
rip-roaring finale could easily be the soundtrack of a 1920s silent movie
starring the Keystone Cops. It is best heard played with a poker-face and
tongue firmly in cheek.
The Second
Concerto in F major (Op.102) was composed for his teenaged son Maxim, and
for once Shostakovich's stock-in-trade sarcasm and irony is held at bay until
the finale's spoof on Hanon's laborious finger exercises. Both enjoyable concertos
get sparkling performances by young Russian pianist Andrei Korobeinikov and SSO
Principal Guest Conductor Okko Kamu's Finnish orchestra. In between the concertos is a kaleidoscopic
reading of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes
(Op.34), which opens with a brief salute to Bach before going its own
iconoclastic path, alternating droll and uproarious numbers, which only he
knows how. Here Korobeinikov is his own master, and this wonderfully nuanced
reading ranks among the best in the catalogue.
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