SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Concertos etc.
Dmitri Shostakovich, piano
EMI Classics 5 62648 2
Musical works recorded by their composers appear to pose a problem. Once you have the composer's own interpretation, how is any other feasible? But a moment's thought dispels the difficulty. The pianist Artur Schnabel once remarked that Beethoven's piano sonatas contain more than can ever be expressed in a single performance. And if there's any truth in that, it should close the matter once and for all.
For those not convinced, further proof is available in this recording of Shostakovich playing the solo part in his own two piano concertos. It has little more than curiosity value. He renders the playful First Piano Concerto, which towards the end contains pastiche of some popular Broadway styles, in humorless, debunking mode. It's as if he's saying, "What garbage all that is! I can do it with my eyes shut!" But Elisabeth Leonskaja, recording the same work for Teldec in 1993 (subsequently reissued by Warner Classics France in 1999) invested it with a marvelous sparkle and wit. This performance by the composer himself sounds positively glum, as if putting the boot in, and in no uncertain manner. Leonskaja's is much the more enjoyable performance, making the composer's intentions -- if that's what his version represents -- sound merely limiting.
POULENC
Concertos Francois Poulenc and others
EMI Classics 5 62649 2
Sometimes, though, the composer can bring to life relatively neglected works by demonstrating the spirit they can be played in. This is the case with one of the three Poulenc concertos offered on this CD. The eclectic Concerto for Two Pianos is a highly zestful piece, and comes across as such here where the composer plays one of the two solo instruments. There are echoes of Balinese gamelan music and of Mozart, and a witty light-heartedness is omnipresent. The disc has the additional pleasure of Poulenc's Concerto for organ, string orchestra and timpani with Maurice Durufle, himself a significant mid-20th century French composer, on the swelling pipe-instrument. It also contains Poulenc's Concert champetre ("country concerto"), written at the age of 30. It's for orchestra and harpsichord, and makes a suitable vehicle for the anti-Romanticism with which the era was so taken up. It's this kind of CD, both of historical interest and a delight in itself, that makes the "Great Recordings" series ultimately so appealing.
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