These works share the common key of E flat major but represent two very different stages in the composer’s life. The Piano Concerto "No. 0," WoO 4, was written when Beethoven was 13 years old and is one of his earliest works. With the orchestral score lost, this extant version for piano solo written in Beethoven’s hand includes the tutti sections reduced for piano. The radiant ‘Emperor’ Concerto shows the 38-year-old Beethoven at the peak of his creative powers, and remains a glorious example of his spirit triumphing over life’s adversities.

REVIEW:

Boris Giltburg’s recording of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto is offered with a scintillating twist, the ‘other’ E-flat concerto composed when the composer was 13. This brings Giltburg’s Beethoven concerto cycle to a close, his ebullience and physicality the reverse of plain-speaking, brilliantly partnered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Vasily Petrenko.

Given such forces this is never simply ‘another’ Emperor, but one boldly and exuberantly conceived. Giltburg makes you listen with new ears to one of the most familiar and greatly loved works in the repertoire. The Piano Concerto No 0 (played in Beethoven’s original piano reduction) may be a protracted jeu d’esprit, but Giltburg’s relish of its tonic, virtuoso aplomb sets the pulse racing. Naxos soundworld is of an exceptional clarity and focus.

-- International Piano

Excellent performances of the Emperor and the rarely heard Concerto No. 0. The sound reproduction on this Naxos CD is vivid and well balanced. Those looking for an excellent performance of the Emperor and who are attracted to its lesser coupling, will certainly find this a most rewarding disc.

-- MusicWeb International

Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 13, Op. 113 in 1962. The climax of his ‘Russian period’ and, in its scoring for bass soloist, male chorus and orchestra, among the most Mussorgskian of his works, it attracted controversy through its settings of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (the ‘Russian Bob Dylan’ of his day)—not least the first movement, where the poet underlines the plight of Jews in Soviet society. The other movements are no less pertinent in their observations on the relationship between society and the individual. This is the final release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.

At its première in June 1969 Shostakovich described his Symphony No. 14, in effect a symphonic song cycle, ‘a fight for the liberation of humanity…a great protest against death, a reminder to live one’s life honestly, decently, nobly…’ Originally intending to write an oratorio, Shostakovich set eleven poems on the theme of mortality, and in particular early or unjust death, for two solo singers accompanied by strings and percussion. This is the penultimate release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.