In August 2022, the musicians of the Rachmaninoff International Orchestra gathered in Bratislava to perform their first recording under the direction of founder and artistic director Mikhail Pletnev. There is an acclaimed arrangement of Swan Lake by Mikhail Pletnev, coupled with Rodion Shchedrin's famous arrangement of the Carmen Suite from Bizet's masterpiece.
Apparently a staple in Russia, the music of Taneyev exists on the fringes of the repertoire in the West, something that should be rectified–and will be if this superb CD made by a starry cast of performers gets the attention it deserves. He’s a Romantic composer, but hardly of the heart-on-sleeve variety, since he was a master of counterpoint and firmly encased his Romantic impulses in a well-fitted classical jacket. Sometimes he makes you think of a more modern, pungent Brahms with a Russian accent.
Schumann's contributions to the literature of the piano etude, a genre just beginning to blossom in the middle nineteenth century at the hands of Chopin and Liszt, came in three isolated, extremely productive bursts, after which he abandoned the genre forever. (It is perhaps no coincidence that Schumann was also forced to abandon hopes for a performing career after permanently crippling the fourth finger of his right hand during the early 1830s.) Schumann's earliest such effort, the Studies on Caprices of Paganini Op. 3 (1832), is at best little more than a preliminary essay toward the later, altogether more successful Concert Etudes on Caprices of Paganini, Op. 10 (1833).
The brilliant pianist and conductor Mikhail Pletnev, winner of the 1978 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, is not only one of the best representatives of the Russian piano tradition, but is also a stunning and idiosyncratic interpreter of the standard repertoire. He is considered one of the greatest pianists of our time.
This is a very enjoyable program of some really worthwhile music. Glazunov's superb violin concerto from 1905 is a conservative, melodic work, but a splendid one whose popularity is definitely well deserved. Gil Shaham's approach is also rather conservative, but in the best sense of the word. The playing is beautifully phrased, warm-toned and romantic, and it is excellently supported by the Russian National Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev. No, Shaham does not really provide any new insights, but as a library version of the work this is, I assume, possibly the best you could do.
Rachmaninov allegedly considered The Bells to be his best work, and it is not difficult to hear why. Written in 1913, it has a freshness of invention that is irresistible. Perhaps the text (an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe poem) struck a chord with this composer's sensibilities: different bells symbolize different facets of existence. The piece deserves more frequent airing, and it is to be hoped that Mikhail Pletnev and his Russian forces help raise awareness of it. The soloists are superb (Mescheriakova is particularly impressive), but the real star is the Moscow State Chamber Choir. This is a worthy companion to Pletnev's accounts of Rachmaninov orchestral works.