CHOPIN Piano Concertos: Nos. 1; 1 2 2 • Shura Cherkassky (pn); 1 Christopher Adey, cond; 2 Richard Hickox, cond; 1 BBC Scottish SO. 2 BBC SO • ICA CLASSICS 5085 (75:22) Live: Glasgow 1 12/3/1981; 2 London 8/30/1983


Shura Cherkassky, according to the liner notes, was sometimes a difficult man to accompany, as he would often change his mind on phrasing or tempos between the final rehearsal and the concert; thus, annotator Robert Orledge says, “some conductors were reluctant to appear with him,” citing as an example the sudden rush with which he plays the final section of the Second Concerto. I can see where this would be a problem. I recall a live performance I attended by a famous American pianist where, suddenly, the keyboardist rushed forward and left the orchestra behind, and I learned later that he did not rehearse the work that way. The difference, if I may say so, is that Cherkassky usually had good taste while the American pianist I heard usually played with poor style regardless of his tempo choices.


Well, as Cherkassky once said to me, “Some people like my playing and some don’t, but at least no one can say that I’m boring.” True enough. Yet I was beginning to doubt that this would be that fine a disc as the First Concerto started up. Conductor Adey plays it very slowly, with lots of romantic gush and goo, and moreover the first minute or so suffers from what is probably a crumply original tape. I was not expecting much. But then Cherkassky entered, and his bracing interpretation of the opening phrases acted like a wake-up call for the orchestra. (Having heard Cherkassky three times in person, twice with an orchestra and once in recital, and also being familiar with many of his recordings, I just don’t see that he would have wanted this concerto played so slowly to begin with. It just wasn’t in his nature, thus I believe that he bristled at Adey’s tempos in both the rehearsal and performance.) From this point on—thankfully—it is the pianist who leads the orchestra, forcing Adey to pick up his tempo or be left behind. One is immediately caught up in the excitement, which despite a sensitively shaped second movement continues on through to the end.


With the Second Concerto, we enter an entirely different world. Richard Hickox was one of the great, underrated conductors of his generation, a man who viewed music as dramatic expression and molded his performances that way. From the very first note, Hickox is on edge, and I mean that almost literally…he makes Chopin’s orchestration sound almost like Beethoven or Schumann, full of drama and bringing out all sorts of inner voices with tremendous clarity. The switch from Adey to Hickox is almost as dramatic as if one suddenly shifted from John Barbirolli to Igor Markevitch, but Cherkassky is entirely in his element. There’s a particularly delicious passage in the second movement when the piano’s descending chromatics clash on one note with the orchestra’s chord—exactly as written, but a detail that normally escapes one’s attention in most performances of the concerto. And Cherkassky’s last-movement cadenza is incendiary, as advertised. It’s a heck of a performance that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Cherkassky’s changes to the text of the score are certainly evident but, like Glenn Gould, they generally enliven and enhance the music. Of course, that would probably keep this disc from being your first choice for recordings of the two concertos, but as a second recording it is definitely recommended.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

The international reputation of Bernard Rands as one of the leading composers of his generation rests on over a hundred well-crafted scores of notable formal cohesion, dramatic intensity and lyrical beauty. The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2013) was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in celebration of Rands's eightieth birthday year and as implied by it's title, the piece is for piano and orchestra rather than a piano concerto. Hence, the solo part is primus inter pares and is not required to play the conventional role of a protagonist striving heroically for supremacy over the masses. Canti del Sole, for tenor and orchestra (1983) describes a day's progression from dawn to dusk through a continuous setting of fourteen poems about the sun. The poems are arranged into two groups of seven. Music for Shoko: Aubade is an atmospheric mini-tone poem for English horn and string quartet (2017). It is dedicated to Bernard Rands's friend Shoko Suzuki in appreciation of their many years of friendship and her devotion to the composer's music. The piece is a transcription of the central 'Aubade' movement from the Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, which was written for the soloist Robert Walters. The solo part of the chamber piece is identical to that of the concerto movement, while the orchestral music is accommodated, with adjustments, by the string quartet.

Dai Miyata has been playing the cello since he was three years old and has won all competitions since the age of nine. He was also the first Japanese to win the first prize at the 9th Rostropovich Competition in 2009, thus finally climbing the Olympus of the international virtuoso world. In a current co-production with DENON, MDG presents the artist, who is still far too little known in this country, with a very special programme: Edward Elgar's popular cello concerto meets the "Dark Pastoral", which David Matthews has recreated from unfinished drafts by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The Cello Concerto is Elgar's last completed major work. Begun towards the end of the First World War in a rural idyll, it carries a tone of melancholy that is unusual for the Britishnational composer. The four-movement arrangement is more reminiscent of a baroque concerto grosso than of the romantic virtuoso concertos. And yet - or is it precisely because of this? - it continues to enjoy great popularity with the public. But the circumstances of the 1919 premiere were anything but conducive: there was hardly any rehearsal time, the conductor had his hands full with Scriabin's "Poème de l'Extase", so Elgar himself took the podium of the London Symphony Orchestra. " never, in all probability, has so great an orchestra made so lamentable an exhibition of itself" wrote the "Observer" correspondent, not without praising the work itself in the highest tones. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Elgar's pupil, has left only sketches for a planned cello concert for the legendary Pablo Casals. Only the slow movement is available in a fair copy, which however breaks off abruptly. In collaboration with the RVW Foundation, David Matthews has turned it into a playable piece, which he called "Dark Pastoral" because of it's elegiac character.