Russian Concertos

Album review

Here is proof that the concertos from the Russian and Soviet spheres do go beyond Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev after all! The Concerto by Mieczysław Weinberg, written in 1959 and dedicated to Leonid Kogan, is one of those impressive masterpieces that far too few great soloists have overlooked. This music is powerful, its immediacy somewhat redolent of Khatchaturian, but without the slightly "everyman" quality of the Armenian composer; and the richness of the writing is much more evocative than ShostaProko without ever copying them or even resembling them: it is 100% Weinberg. The work is played by Viennese violinist Benjamin Schmid, who may not have the slick marketing operation of many modern soloists, but is very much a match for any of them.

On the second part of the album, Kabalewski's Fantasia for Piano turns out to be nothing other than an orchestration (albeit "augmented" with some counter-thematic ornaments which are not Schubert's) with a lead piano of Schubert's Fantastia for Four Hands! Claire Huangci is behind the piano, well-known to the orchestras of Philadelphia, Stuttgart, Berlin, the Mozarteum, Vancouver, Munich and others of the same calibre. The album closes with Kabalewski's First Cello Concerto, written in 1949. Between Weinberg and Kabalewski, naturally, there is a chasm: for while Weinberg was persecuted by the Soviet dictatorship throughout his life, Kabalewski knew how to go with the flow (admittedly a necessity if he didn't want to end up in Siberia or in the ground), and wrote music which was clearly more consensual and straightforward to the listener. This doesn't in any sense mean that he was writing "easy" music, or that it is short on moments of great inspiration. The Concerto is performed by the Dutch cellist Harriet Krijgh, who has pursued a sparkling international career since taking first prize at the Dutch Prinses Christina Concours, as well as first prize at the Amsterdam Cello Biennale. © SM/Qobuz