Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 & Youth Symphony - Silvestrov: The Messenger

Album review

Recordings of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, are quite abundant despite the work's still-formidable technical hurdles, but this one by pianist Anna Fedorova has what it takes to stand out in several respects. One is the program as a whole, which includes the so-called Rachmaninov Youth Symphony of 1891, performed by conductor Modestas Pitrenas and the underrated Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen. This is a single movement of an unfinished symphony Rachmaninov began in his teens and abandoned, discouraged by both his teachers and his own evaluation. However, it is entirely listenable, even if it sounds more like Tchaikovsky (especially Francesca da Rimini) than Rachmaninov. The finale is Valentin Silvestrov's The Messenger, a solo piano work and a particularly calm example of Silvestrov's eclectic style, here put to the unusual use of winding down a virtuoso program. The biggest draw is Fedorova's original conception of the Piano Concerto No. 3 itself. Her reading is to the delicate side, which may sound like a bizarre idea for this most virtuosic of concertos, but hear her swiftness and clarity, and especially her refusal to adopt an over-the-top mood in the second movement, which here takes on lovely shades. There is a certain trend to view Rachmaninov as more of a Classicist and even a contrapuntist than he has generally been taken to be, and Fedorova offers a fine example, backed closely by Pitrenas. This may be the first album with a booklet ruminating whether Russian music should be played at this juncture in history (Fedorova, a native of Kyiv, points out reasonably enough that Rachmaninov was also a victim of the Russian state), but it certainly won't be the last. Channel Classics' clear sound from the Tonhalle in St. Gallen is ideal.
© James Manheim /TiVo