Rachmaninov Piano Concertos

Pianist Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort (1984) was one of the laureates and the audience’s favourite of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium in 2007. Since that time he has built an honourable reputation as a concert pianist, giving recitals in prestigious concert halls in Europe, Israel, China, South Africa, Canada and the USA.

Pianist Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort (1984) was one of the laureates and the audience’s favourite of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium in 2007. Since that time he has built an honourable reputation as a concert pianist, giving recitals in prestigious concert halls in Europe, Israel, China, South Africa, Canada and the USA.

Known for his dazzling performances of music by Franz Liszt and Sergey Rachmaninov, Russian virtuoso Nikolai Lugansky presents his first recording of the two piano concertos of Frédéric Chopin, which are much quieter than his usual fare. Indeed, the music seems quite intimate and almost chamber-like on this 2013 Naïve Ambroisie release, due to Lugansky's controlled and fairly introspective playing.

It was the heroic age, the postwar age when American pianists first made their mark in the great wide world. The heroes took many forms: the apollonian Van Cliburn, the dionysic Byron Janis, and the mercurial Gary Graffman, along with many, many others. The most intellectually brilliant and technically incendiary member of the pantheon was Leon Fleisher. While other heroes rode the Russian war horses of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov to fame and glory, Fleisher stuck with Beethoven and Brahms, the Alpha and Omega of German composers for the piano. In these Columbia recordings of Beethoven's Third and Fourth piano concertos from the 1959 and 1961, Fleisher teamed with George Szell, the sternest of living conductors, leading the Cleveland Orchestra, the most virtuosic of American orchestras, and the results are transcendent.

Given that there are so many discs of the Rachmaninov Piano Concertos available to buy, you have to ask what makes this set different or better than the rest? It's quite refreshing for a start, that all the works are played by different pianists. My main incentive to buy it was Nikolai Petrov's fantastic performance of the 4th Concerto in G minor, its first release on CD from vinyl.

The outstanding young German pianist Joseph Moog makes his debut on ONYX with a superb disc of two great Russian piano concertos that have had very different fates.

All of Rachmaninov’s music - from his earliest student compositions to his final masterpieces – has been collected together for the first time on 32 CDs, in what is definitively the most complete and comprehensive edition of Rachmaninov’s works ever released.

The journey continues: Deutsche Grammophon is releasing an exclusive box set of Rachmaninov's four piano concertos, recorded by Daniil Trifonov and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézét -Séguin, to mark the 150th Rachmaninov anniversary. Also included are the Paganini Rhapsody, as well as Trifonov's own Rachmaninov transcriptions.

Joseph Moog is a young pianist with a superb technique and a warm tone. He also composes. On this album, he interestingly pairs concertos by two of Russia’s foremost pianist-composers. Anton Rubinstein’s Fourth Piano Concerto actually was in Rachmaninoff’s repertory as a soloist. Drawing attention to the neglected Rubinstein concerto by following it with a more famous work is a device that certainly is welcome. The opening movement of the Rubinstein is heavily influenced by Schumann’s piano concerto, particularly its first movement. Moog here takes on the mantle of the Schumannesque lyric poet, his tonal palette featuring halftones of grays and browns. Moog’s second movement is a true andante , or walking tempo, unlike some other performances. He plays the affecting opening melody simply and directly, introducing a shadow of melancholy that he sustains beautifully throughout the movement.