Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op.1 (1891, revised 1917)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op.18 (1901)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op.30 (1909)
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op.40 (1926, revised 1941)
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43 (1934)
Symphonic Movement in D minor ‘Youth Symphony’ (1891)
Preludes Op.23/1 & 2 (1903)
Preludes Op.32/5 & 12 (1910)
Anna Fedorova (piano)
Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen/Modestas Pitrenas
rec. 2019-22, Tonhalle Theater, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Channel Classics CCSBOX7723 [3 CDs: 194]
Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova is well past her early period of prize gathering and prestigious debuts around the world. She is now established as one of the best on the circuit. Lately her profile rose further, for the saddest and best of reasons. Since the Russian invasion of her home country, she has organized benefit concerts for the victims of the war. With other musicians, she has raised substantial sums for humanitarian aid organizations. But she was not about to stop playing Russian music. She says: “Throughout my life Rachmaninov and his music have had a special place in my heart. Even though I am Ukrainian and was born in Kiev many decades after the October revolution, I always felt a connection to the old pre-revolutionary Russia. Rachmaninov was never able to return to, or even visit his home country after emigrating from Russia, but his homeland always remained in his heart, and is always reflected in his music.”
Reviewers have praised the single-disc issues of the works now combined into this complete survey. This site also found them successful, if not quite unreservedly so (review ~ review). It is an immensely crowded field, and Rachmaninov’s 150th anniversary year has seen new issues and reissues of music on this programme. It has long been impossible to speak of any one collection of these five piano-and-orchestra works sweeping the board. The obvious special exception was the cycle the composer himself, but most collectors will want something more recent than mono from before World War II.
Fedorova has the required qualities, as evidenced right in the first movement of First Concerto. The clear sense of structure and direction is shared with the conductor. There is plenty of bravura playing in swift passages, but somehow this element is not foregrounded as it may be with other players. One tends to think “Gosh, this is terrific music ahead of “My, this is terrific playing”. Reservations about the calibre of these compositions will find little support here. In a work like the Third Concerto there are moments, and not always the audibly obvious ones, where a transcendental technique is almost assumed. Fedorova plays these very well, but offers us more than a “tigress of the keyboard” impression. Instead, she integrates the attention-grabbing parts into the larger argument, as in the scherzando section of the Second Concerto’s Adagio sostenuto.
This always musical playing is also collaborative. One can often sense that the pianist, the conductor and solo instrumentalists listen to each other. Take the tenderly expressive first statements of the big tune in the finale of the Second Concerto, ahead of the later apotheosis, and there is no overdone rubato even then. Rachmaninov can sound tasteful, even restrained, in these hands.
But that comes at a price: broad tempi for the most part, and a tendency to linger over pauses and rallentandi. In the Third Concerto, Fedorova takes 48 minutes, far longer than most other readings. She plays the first movement’s ossia cadenza (very well) and makes none of the still frequently heard cuts the composer approved, yet those would not themselves account for her difference from the composer’s timing of 33 minutes. (See the already mentioned review for the complicated relationship between cut and uncut, and shorter and longer timings.) But it is an impressive Third, compelling at times. Despite the lenght, I never felt the piece outstayed its welcome: the artists make it work on its own terms. I believe uncut Rachmaninov should be usually preferred to cut versions, in the piano sonatas above all. The structures can take it when performers have developed a holistic view of the original text.
The ‘American’ works, the Fourth Concerto and the Paganini Rhapsody, are just as impressive, even if the burnished sound of the leading US orchestras on recent alternatives might be preferred to the highly competent playing of the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen. The Swiss players relish their many critical contributions to the Rhapsody in particular, right up to the final statement of Dies irae. Fedorova brings technical confidence, lyrical feeling and a delightful rhythmic élan to this work, so it is among the most desirable in the set.
The attractive group of four solo Préludes, with performances sparkling and haunting as required, make more than agreeable fillers. But the unexpected inclusion of the attractive Youth Symphony (in a good account) is unlikely to sway many byuers.
The well-balanced sound offers a good stalls seat in a concert hall with a warm acoustic. The piano and orchestra do not drown out the other – these really are concertos for piano and orchestra, with no highlighting of either element. There are adequate booklet notes in English, French and German.
Two very recent recorded cycles come from Deutsche Grammophon. I have greatly enjoyed much of Daniil Trifonov’s single-disc issues of Nos. 2 and 4 (review) and Nos. 1 and 3 (review); the concerti and his earlier Paganini Rhapsody have now been collected into a box of three CDs plus a Blu-ray disc. The sound is very fine, as is the playing of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Yuja Wang’s traversal, live with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, has also arrived (review). I have not heard that, but she gave the finest account of any Rachmaninov concerto I have heard live (the Third in Riga in 2019, with Zubin Mehta). These two DGG issues might be more glamourous than this release, not least with such orchestras, but Fedorova has her own brand of pianistic charisma, and her cycle is very well worth hearing.
Roy Westbrook
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