Starter Packs

Complete your collection with these curated titles, grouped at a special discount.

Shop Now
Shostakovich: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 / Giltburg, Petrenko, RLPO
Naxos

Shostakovich: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 / Giltburg, Petrenko, RLPO

$19.99

Details

Composer
SHOSTAKOVICH, DMITRI
Artist
Giltburg, Owens, Petrenko
Format
CD
Label
Naxos
Released
Jan 13, 2017
Catalog #
8573666
UPC
747313366675

About

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Shostakovich’s two Piano Concertos span a period of almost thirty years. The youthful First Piano Concerto is a masterful example of eclecticism, its inscrutable humour and seriousness allied to virtuoso writing enhanced by the rôle for solo trumpet. Written as a birthday present for his son Maxim, the Second Piano Concerto is light-spirited with a hauntingly beautiful slow movement. With the permission of the composer’s family, Boris Giltburg has arranged the exceptionally dark, deeply personal and powerful String Quartet No. 8, thereby establishing a major Shostakovich solo piano composition.



REVIEWS:


We have no shortage of excellent versions of the two Shostakovich piano concertos, including Igoshina’s on CPO and Marc-André Hamelin’s on Hyperion. Here is another. These are big, bold, in-your-face performances that find a wider range of expression in both works than you might have believed possible. Much of the credit for this belongs to Vasily Petrenko as well, who continues his series of top-notch Shostakovich recordings for Naxos.

In the First Concerto, particularly the outer movements, Giltburg attacks the zany, theater music themes with unbridled ferocity, finding a bitter edge of desperation for all the music’s wackiness. The bright, up-front sonics and Rhys Owens’ piercing trumpet complement the approach, and there is also some remarkably precise ensemble playing from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic strings. It’s an exhausting cliff-hanger of a performance.

Giltburg and Petrenko’s vision of the theoretically light and easy Second Piano Concerto is even more striking. From the dry, perky winds at the start to the positively cataclysmic first movement development section, this is clearly a performance that has tremendous character–one which finds plenty of menace beneath the music’s breezy, sometimes comical, sometimes sweetly romantic exterior. It makes you sit up and listen with fresh ears, truly.

The two concertos really are two short for a single disc, and finding appropriate couplings is always an issue. This is where things get really interesting. Giltburg has made transcriptions of some of Shostakovich’s music for string quartet, the Waltz third movement from the Second Quartet, and the entire Eighth Quartet. He evidently had permission from Shostakovich’s family, which means nothing, as family members are usually terrible guardians of their illustrious ancestral legacies.

The Waltz works well enough, but the Eighth Quartet is an impossible piece to transcribe for the keyboard. This is string music, plain and simple. The sustained notes in the fourth movement simply cannot be reproduced on the piano, although with clever pedaling and a sensible tempo Giltburg almost pulls it off. The savage second movement sounds positively tame here: evidently it’s much easier to push a string quartet to its limits than it is a Fazioli.

Curiously, however, it’s impossible to call the performance as such a failure. It’s quite moving in its way, and if you know the original, either as a quartet or in its chamber symphony version, you can’t help but come away with a renewed appreciation of Shostakovich’s genius for matching the music to the (original) medium. But please, let’s not have any more of these experiments. One is more than enough. A great disc.

– ClassicsToday(David Hurwitz; 10/10)

Giltburg has all the agility, power and expressive intensity Shostakovich’s piano concertos demand, plus the temperament to negotiate their mercurial shifts of mood. Every phrase is imaginatively colored or nuanced, and never out of gimmicky point making, always because he has something worth saying. And he has found like-minded partners in the RLPO and Petrenko, who not only follow and support him superbly but also respond and provoke where appropriate.

– Gramophone

What is so appealing about this record is that the Boris Giltburg has rethought the works through the prism of the composer’s experiences. The first concerto is wonderfully skittish, a series of melodic in-jokes and exchanges with the orchestra. The second concerto, determinedly frisky, is played with a reckless to-hell-with-it abandon. With devastating precision, Giltburg has interpolated between the concertos his own piano reductions of one movement of the second string quartet and the entirety of the eight quartet, contemporaneous with the two piano concertos, exposing the composer’s seditious inner thoughts. This is a constantly illuminating, almost faultless project.

– Norman Lebrecht

Tracklist 13 tracks

  1. 1 I. Allegro moderato 06:12
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Allegro moderato
    Duration
    06:12
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg, Rhys Owens
    Ensemble
    Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
    Conductor
    Vasily Petrenko
  2. 2 II. Lento 08:14
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Lento
    Duration
    08:14
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg, Rhys Owens
    Ensemble
    Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
    Conductor
    Vasily Petrenko
  3. 3 III. Moderato - 01:56
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Moderato -
    Duration
    01:56
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg, Rhys Owens
    Ensemble
    Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
    Conductor
    Vasily Petrenko
  4. 4 IV. Allegro con brio 07:01
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. Allegro con brio
    Duration
    07:01
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg, Rhys Owens
    Ensemble
    Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
    Conductor
    Vasily Petrenko
  5. 5 String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68: III. Waltz: Allegro (arr. B. Giltburg for piano) 05:56
    Track
    5
    Title
    String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68: III. Waltz: Allegro (arr. B. Giltburg for piano)
    Duration
    05:56
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
  6. 6 I. Allegro 07:30
    Track
    6
    Title
    I. Allegro
    Duration
    07:30
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
    Ensemble
    Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
    Conductor
    Vasily Petrenko
  7. 7 II. Andante 06:59
    Track
    7
    Title
    II. Andante
    Duration
    06:59
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
    Ensemble
    Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
    Conductor
    Vasily Petrenko
  8. 8 III. Allegro 05:30
    Track
    8
    Title
    III. Allegro
    Duration
    05:30
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
    Ensemble
    Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
    Conductor
    Vasily Petrenko
  9. 9 I. Largo - 04:39
    Track
    9
    Title
    I. Largo -
    Duration
    04:39
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
  10. 10 II. Allegro molto - 03:07
    Track
    10
    Title
    II. Allegro molto -
    Duration
    03:07
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
  11. 11 III. Allegretto - 04:08
    Track
    11
    Title
    III. Allegretto -
    Duration
    04:08
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
  12. 12 IV. Largo - 04:46
    Track
    12
    Title
    IV. Largo -
    Duration
    04:46
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg
  13. 13 V. Largo 03:48
    Track
    13
    Title
    V. Largo
    Duration
    03:48
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Boris Giltburg