KABALEVSKY: Piano Concerto No. 3 / RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Piano Concerto

Album review

Kabalevsky was an interesting figure in that he was very active as a composer of large-scale concert works, but was also extremely active in the musical education of Russia's children, much more so than virtually all of his many well-known contemporaries. The best way to contribute to this type of musical education is to ensure that young musicians have plenty of accessible repertoire. To that end, Kabalevsky wrote a great many works specifically for student players. This Naxos album features two of them: the Third Piano Concerto and the Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra on the Theme of the Song "School Years." While any student would be quite fortunate to have such works at his/her disposal, they are most definitely student works, and they sound like it. Technical bravura is kept to a minimum and musical interpretation needn't go much further than making a march exciting. Still, fans of the composer will welcome this additional insight into his output. The album also contains another oddity of the repertoire: Rimsky-Korsakov's piano concerto. Rimsky-Korsakov was a brilliant orchestrator -- perhaps one of the best ever -- but by his own admission, was not a pianist. Although he made great strides to learn how to write pianistically, this concerto does not achieve the same level of idiomatic writing as contributions from his contemporaries. Performing this unlikely set of works is pianist Hsin-Ni Liu with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra under Dmitry Yablonsky (whose mother was among Liu's teachers). From a performance perspective, all of the artists do the best that could be expected with the material they're given. Liu's playing is powerful and precise, though few challenges in musicality or technique are truly presented. The RPO performs admirably, staying out of the way of the piano when necessary.

© TiVo

Details of original recording : 54:09 - DDD - Enregistré au Studio 5 de la Radio et Télévision d'État Russe Kultura à Moscou du 10 au 15 juin 2005 et le 29 novembre 2006 - Notes en anglais et allemand