Rachmaninov Piano Concertos

In my own compositions, no conscious effort has been made to be original, or Romantic or Nationalistic, or anything else. I write down on paper the music I hear within me, as naturally as possible…

Pianist Daniil Trifonov releases Destination Rachmaninov - Departure, the first of two albums comprising Trifonov's cycle of the great Russian composer's piano concertos. The album features Concertos Nos. 2 & 4, recorded with Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra (the same orchestra with which Rachmaninov recorded this set of concerti over 80 years ago), along with Rachmaninov's solo piano transcriptions of three movements from Bach's Violin Partita in E Major.

Lovers of Rachmaninov's Second and Third Piano Concertos should rush to buy, while it's still available, this magnificent CD by Noriko Ogawa, Owain Arwel Hughes, and the Malmo [Sweden] Symphony Orchestra. The Ogawa-Hughes-Malmo recording belongs alongside legendary performances by Argerich, Ashkenazy, Horowitz, Janis, Kapell, and the composer himself, and it is second to none in overall excellence.

Noriko Ogawa and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra return to the works of Rachmaninov with a disc featuring his first and fourth piano concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Rachmaninov’s first concerto was written while he was a student at the Moscow Concervatory, but underwent considerable revisions up to 1917.

This Naxos CD was released in 1998 and features 1995 recordings of Rachmaninov's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 4 with the considerable bonus of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43. As is often the case with Naxos orchestral recordings of this vintage, the sound is a little distant but opens up to reveal more than adequate engineering at higher volume levels.

Russo-British pianist Yevgeny Sudbin has traversed the Rachmaninov concertos at a deliberate pace, issuing a recording of the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40 in 2007 and rounding out the set with this reading of the Second and Third in 2018. His Rachmaninov is carefully wrought, subtly intertwined with the orchestral part rather than trafficking in high contrasts, and here the effect is heightened by Sudbin's unusual interpretation of the opening Moderato of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18.

Despite the recording dates, the sound and balance are superb, and there's nothing to cloud your sense of Ashkenazy's greatness in all these works. From him every page declares Rachmaninov's nationality, his indelibly Russian nature. What nobility of feeling and what dark regions of the imagination he relishes and explores in page after page of the Third Concerto. Significantly his opening is a very moderate Allegro ma non tanto, later allowing him an expansiveness and imaginative scope hard to find in other more 'driven' or hectic performances. His rubato is as natural as it's distinctive, and his way of easing from one idea to another shows him at his most intimately and romantically responsive.