The Greek pianist Panagiotis Trochopoulos was born in 1982 and,
having studied with Nikolai Petrov, graduated from Moscow Conservatory
in 2006. He has already recorded Pabst’s Concerto in B
flat major for
Cameo
Classics, a work that was given its first public performance
in 120 years in 1985, and earned the sobriquet ‘The Lost
Concerto’ as a result - or maybe it was a handy tag.
Now he stays with native Russian soil for this live recital,
recorded in the Theatre in Veria, in his home country. As with
that Pabst disc the audience is remarkably quiet. The focus of
the evening was on the ten Op.23 Preludes of Rachmaninoff. He
plays them very adeptly and the tone colours he extracts from
his Steinway sound suitably Russian. He doesn’t indulge
in extremes, either of dynamic variance or of metrical displacements.
So, for example, he is not nearly as draconian-fast as Gavrilov
in the First in F sharp minor: EMI 5655602, but this contains
only a selection of the Preludes] nor does he engage in quite
the rubato of, say, Biret (Naxos 8.550348). He remains relatively
direct, and it becomes more apparent as the cycle develops that
his musical instincts are unexaggerated and commonsensical. Yet
he can voice powerfully, as in the G minor, and ensure that his
articulation is brisk, as in the case of the E flat minor, where
he’s not quite as will-o-the-wisp as Biret. What he has
yet to develop is that sense of tonal richness and lyric phraseology
that someone like Earl Wild possesses (Ivory Classics 78002)
in which voices teem individually even at fast tempi and in which
that compelling tensile quality assumes a heroic quality.
The Scriabin Poems reflect well on his acute selectivity offering
good contrasts, as they do. The First exudes, in his hands, yearning
and is nicely pedalled, though it doesn’t seek to replicate
the terse suddenness located in it by one of the composer’s
greatest executants, Sofronitzky. Similarly No.2 is more skittish
than Sofronitzky, and less inherently mutable. Arensky’s
Three Pieces were written in the 1890s and consist of a Prelude,
Romance and Etude. The first is lyrical and warm hued, the second
pliant and the Etude - what else? - a sprightly way to end. One
doesn’t get the chance to hear the Op.42 set very often
so it’s more than welcome in this generous performance.
There have been more outsize and incursive performances of Stravinsky’s
daunting Three Movements from Petrushka but Trochopoulos turns
in a commanding reading, reserving maximal virtuosity for
The
Shrove-tide Fair.
Trochopoulos now adds a strong recital disc to that previous
concerto one. I suppose the next question relates to questions
of a more geographically balanced recorded repertoire, if of
course that is considered desirable.
Jonathan Woolf
Panagiotis Trochopoulos (piano) 
