Tchaikovsky & Scriabin - Piano Concertos - Helios: CDH55304 - download

Demidenko offers a blazing yet superbly-controlled account of the Tchaikovsky No. 1. And this is the best available version of Sciabin's youthful, Chopinesque Concerto. — BBC Music Magazine, January 2008, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 29th Oct 2007
Catalogue No: CDH55304
Label: Helios
Length: 65 minutes

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23

Work length36:19

Album only

Nikolai Demidenko (piano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Lazarev

I. Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso – Allegro con spirito

Track length21:47

Album only

II. Andantino semplice – Prestissimo – Andantino semplice

Track length7:32

$1.50

$1.85

III. Allegro con fuoco – Molto meno mosso – Allegro vivo

Track length7:00

$1.00

$1.25

Scriabin: Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, Op. 20

Work length28:54

$4.50

$5.55

Nikolai Demidenko (piano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Lazarev

I. Allegro

Track length7:57

$1.50

$1.85

II. Andante – Allegro scherzando – Adagio – Allegretto – Tempo 1

Track length10:07

$1.50

$1.85

III. Allegro moderato

Track length10:50

$1.50

$1.85

Reviews
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Reviews

January 2008

Demidenko offers a blazing yet superbly-controlled account of the Tchaikovsky No. 1. And this is the best available version of Sciabin's youthful, Chopinesque Concerto.

2010

The chief attraction here is the unusual coupling which pairs two sharply opposed examples of Russian Romanticism, and although the reasons for the neglect of Scriabin's Piano Concerto aren't hard to fathom (its lyrical and decorative flights are essentially inward-looking), its haunting, bittersweet beauty, particularly in the central Andante, is hard to resist. Demidenko's own comments, quoted in the accompanying booklet, are scarcely less intense and individual than his performance: 'in the ambience, phrasing and cadence of his music we meet with a world almost without skin, a world of nerve-ends where the slightest contact can bring pain.' His playing soars quickly to meet the music's early passion head on, and in the first più mosso scherzando he accelerates to produce a brilliant lightening of mood. His flashing fortes in the Andante's second variation are as volatile as his pianissimos are starry and refined in the finale's period reminiscence, and although he might seem more tight-lipped, less expansive than Ashkenazy on Decca, he's arguably more dramatic and characterful. Demidenko's Tchaikovsky, too, finds him ferreting out and sifting through every texture, forever aiming at optimum clarity. While this is hardly among the greatest Tchaikovsky Firsts on record, it's often gripping and mesmeric. The recorded balance isn't always ideal and the piano sound is sometimes uncomfortably taut.

Tchaikovsky & Scriabin - Piano Concertos

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