Pyotr Il’yich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Piano Concerto No. 2 [42:03]
Aram KHACHATURIAN (1903-1978)
Piano Concerto [33:35]
Xiayin Wang (piano)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Peter Oundjian (conductor)
rec. Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 8 & 9 November 2015
CHANDOS SACD CHSA5167 [75:54]
This disc comes after the RSNO’s previous collaboration
with Xiayin Wang on American Piano Concertos (review). Similar to that disc,
it follows performances of the Khachaturian concerto in the concert hall (review),
and is just as successful. If neither concerto has yet managed to achieve
breakthrough mainstream concert hall popularity, there is still a huge amount
of great music on offer, and this disc deserves to win friends for both the
music and the performers.
Due to my link with the concert, I started the disc by listening to the Khachaturian.
There is a satisfying sense of scale to the opening with its triple octaves
in the piano, but at the same time there is forward movement, and Peter Oundjian
manages to avoid making the texture of what can be an episodic movement sound
boggy or static. The wind-led second theme is graceful, almost balletic, and
Wang's perambulations around the tune have a rhapsodic, tripping air
to them, nicely offsetting the fireworks of the opening. When she played the
concerto in Edinburgh, I remember being most impressed by the poetry she found
beneath the chutzpah, and that comes out in the way she plays the first movement's
cadenza, with lots of colour and contrast, but also a sense of lyricism, almost
coyness, that lies perceptibly just below the surface, and which then dissolves
wonderfully into the larger-than-life coda.
The slow movement is sultry and evocative, with slightly eastern-tinged inflections
that glitter beautifully in Chandos' ever-excellent recorded sound,
and they get the flexatone sound just about right, atmospherically present
behind the violins without dominating. The low winds, especially, are really
satisfying, and Wang's way with the big chordal accompaniment is surprisingly
subtle. Such subtlety is rightly thrown out the window with the assertive,
honky-took opening of the finale which canters along like something out of
Shostakovich. There is a hectic, almost manic sense of energy to this movement,
and Wang’s richly grounded playing seems to anchor the orchestra's
craziness in the opening sections, before they swap places in the run-up the
return of the big opening theme, which sails across the finishing line with
scale and grandeur.
The opening burst of the Tchaikovsky didn’t grab me as much as I would
have liked. It’s refined and a little aristocratic rather than going
for hell-for-leather punch that, say, Matsuev (Mariinsky - review)
or Hough (Hyperion - review)
bring to it, or, but there is some method to it, intentional or otherwise,
because the theme grows in stature as the movement progresses so that by the
time of its later restatement it is much more vigorous. The orchestra match
it with a beautifully expressive second subject that pours gorgeously out
of the clarinet and horn and which is then answered by the piano with delicate
restraint. Wang matches them well with as much of the lyricism as she summons
for the Khachaturian, and she finds a gorgeously mellifluous tone for the
subsequent cadenza.
The highlight of the whole disc, however, is the gorgeous slow movement, one
of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful creations, and heaven be praised that
they opt for the composer’s own version and not Siloti’s inexcusable
bastardisation of it. Maya Iwabuchi and Aleksei Kiseliov, RSNO leader and
principal cello, produce an über-Romantic sound with lots of vibrato against
a soft, supportive bed of strings, and the piano’s interaction with
them is really sensational. The finale then has a lovely bounce to it with
just the right mix of weight and jollity, and the piano weaves in and out
of the orchestral texture beautifully, climaxing, as it should, in an exciting
dash to the finishing line.
So this is a winning disc that celebrates a concerto partnership that clearly
works. If neither is quite a first choice – Berezovsky
remains the most convincing advocate for the Khachaturian on disc, while Matsuev
and Hough are fascinatingly different in their approach to the Tchaikovsky
– then they’re both very successful and, if you want SACD sound,
this coupling might just pip those others.
Simon Thompson
Previous review: Dan
Morgan
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