Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Piano concerto no.2 in G major, op. 44 (1881, ed. Siloti)
Concert fantasia for piano and orchestra in G minor, op. 56 (1885)
Emil Gilels (piano, concerto)
Tatiana Nikolayeva (piano, fantasia)
USSR State Symphony/Kyrill Kondrashin
rec. 1952 (fantasia), live, 1959 (concerto), Moscow
Alto ALC1711 [64]

I first encountered Tchaikovsky’s second piano concerto in the early 1970s when EMI released a tremendously exciting performance by Sylvia Kersenbaum, accompanied by the Orchestre National de l’O.R.T.F. under Jean Martinon. That strikingly forthright account, just as impressive today as it was then, may be found on the twofer collection Tchaikovsky: Les concertos (EMI Classics 5696952). It was Ms Kersenbaum who first opened my eyes to the second concerto, a work that I have subsequently grown to both admire and love. In spite, however, of snapping up many of its recordings that have since been released, only now am I embarrassed to discover that I have never before heard one particular early and very notable performance.

The distinctiveness of Gilels’s live account, re-released here by Alto, lies in the fact that, on the day, the pianist was in absolutely red-hot and spur-of-the-moment form. Let us take a moment to compare it with a studio – and thus, I think we can assume, a less spontaneous and more considered – recording from the same pianist, made a decade later when he was accompanied by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Evgeny Svetlanov (Melodiya/BMG Classics 74321170832).

As you can see, the caught-on-the-wing 1962 performance comes in at a full 4½ minutes faster overall than its 1972 counterpart. Each of the outer movements is delivered in a more impulsive, fiery fashion, while the central andante non troppo exhibits significantly more focused direction and impetus.

The timings of the middle movement in both the 1962 and 1972 performances indicate, of course, that Gilels is using Alexander Siloti’s abbreviated 1897 revision of Tchaikovsky’s original 1881 score, “diminuée d’après les indications de l’auteur”, as it was claimed, and still favoured by some pianists to this day as improving the concerto’s overall structural balance. The decision to play Siloti must certainly have been Gilels’s own, for the abbreviated version was by no means necessarily the performing norm among Soviet pianists at that time. That is clearly demonstrated when we consider the much admired 1968 Melodiya account from Igor Zhukov and conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, where, at 15:15, the slow movement is almost twice as long as in Gilels’s earlier performance. [That particular Zhukov performance, by the way, actually raises a few issues of its own. My own Melodiya/BMG Classics twofer [74321 49612 2], for instance, claims that Rozhdestvensky is leading the USSR RTV Large Symphony Orchestra, while my colleague Tony Haywood has twice suggested in passing that it is actually the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra that’s in support (review, review). Even more curiously, while both Tony and I concur that the Zhukov/Rozhdestvensky performance presents the full unedited original version of the andante non troppo, our colleague Rob Barnett recalls that, on the recording that he owned in the 1970s, Zhukov adopted Siloti. Though certainly not impossible, it surely beggars belief that, within just a decade, Melodiya would have released the same soloist in no less than three different recordings of the same work – two (both with Rozhdestvensky) of the full version and one of the Siloti revision. I will, however, leave that particular discographical puzzle for others to unravel.]

While fiery attack is the distinguishing characteristic of the first and third movements of Gilels’s 1962 performance, the most notable feature of its central andante non troppo derives from the contributions of the solo violinist and cellist. Siloti seems to have felt that the extra focus on the violin and cello in Tchaikovsky’s original version risked overshadowing the pianist’s part in this particular ménage à trois and, as already noted, he consequently wielded his blue pencil to reduce their contribution very significantly. However, the passionately romantic fervour that the two (sadly unnamed) players bring to the table, unrivalled in that respect by any other recorded account that I can recall, makes the middle movement of Gilels’s 1962 performance especially memorable. Moreover – and quite atypically of Melodiya productions of the time – the violinist and cellist are not only well recorded but also beautifully balanced, not only with each other but with Gilels’s piano and the orchestra too. With playing of such intensity and quality, it’s a real shame that, on this occasion, the decision was made to adopt the abbreviated score.

It’s further to be regretted that the general sound quality of the recording is so dull. Soviet technicians – as well as the factories that pressed the discs themselves – were quite unable to match the standards being regularly achieved in the West at that time and, although Alto boldly claims that the material here has been “Newly mastered!” (or, as the rear cover surely more accurately puts it, “remastered”), some listeners may, I suspect, be tempted to give up on it within just a few moments. If, however, you can get through the impression that your speakers have been partially stuffed with balls of cotton wool, the artistic gains will, I assure you, prove most rewarding.

Late in life, Tatiana Nikolayeva gained something of a cult status in the West, with critics praising, in particular, her performances of music by Bach and by Shostakovich. Unfortunately, while she grins out from the CD’s cover in the manner of everyone’s favourite twinkling grandma, I doubt that she can have been very happy with this disappointing recording of the op. 56 Concert fantasia in G minor. Reviewing what I take to be the same one – for Soviet discographical history can, as already suggested, be very confusing – my colleague Rob Barnett was unimpressed, both by the piece itself (“the least convincing of Tchaikovsky’s works for piano and orchestra”) and by a standard of engineering that was pretty awful even for the Soviet Union in the 1950s (“an audio image that is muffled and afflicted with spalling distortion”).

Sadly, even Alto’s no doubt considerable efforts at mastering/remastering haven’t managed to bring this recording’s sound up to a level that’s more than just about bearable. Moreover, unlike some others who have admired Nikolaeva’s performance, I find it fatally compromised by a lack of drive. This essentially slight piece simply cannot bear the weight that Nikolaeva occasionally seeks to attach to it. Indeed, a few passages are delivered with such wilfully slow tempi that its overall direction is temporarily lost, and there’s even the odd moment where it seems as if the whole thing may be in danger of grinding to a juddering halt. Much more convincing is the approach of, say, Werner Haas, accompanied by the Orchestre National de l’Opera de Monte-Carlo under Eliahu Inbal on a Philips Classics twofer (438 329-2). His fine performance is characterised by a degree of impetuosity, incision and sheer flightiness that I look for in vain in Nikolaeva’s. It is not just an issue of timings, for there really isn’t that much to choose in that respect between the two versions (Nikolaeva 29:52; Haas 28:16). Rather, it is that each artist seems to perceive the piece from an entirely different standpoint – and I simply find Haas’s approach the more convincing. Indeed, I suspect that his performance might even convince Rob Barnett that the Concert fantasia does, after all, have something worthwhile to offer.

Incidentally, unlike almost all other sets that market themselves as collections of the complete Tchaikovsky works for piano and orchestra, Haas and Inbal throw in a considerable (20:38) bonus in the form of the usually overlooked Andante and finale. Tchaikovsky clearly found some difficulty with those two linked movements, actually dismissing them at one point as “not worth very much”. Having originally envisioned them as part of a planned-but-abandoned seventh symphony (since reconstructed in full by Semyon Bogatyrev and famously recorded in 1962 by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra [CBS Masterworks MPK 46453]), he subsequently repurposed the material as the concluding movements of a third piano concerto before, it seems, rejecting them altogether (the surviving evidence is somewhat ambiguous). In fact, they only saw the light of day in their present form as a standalone piece in 1897 when, having been fleshed out and orchestrated by Sergei Taneyev, they were published with the posthumous opus no. 79. Their inclusion makes Haas’s twofer collection both a generous and an attractive one.

Setting aside the disappointing Nikolaeva recording, then, this newly released Alto disc will appeal primarily to lovers of the second concerto and to Emil Gilels’s many admirers. For anyone who finds the quality of the sound an insuperable deterrent, there are, however, plenty of other more modern choices.

One good option might be vol. 50 in the Hyperion Romantic piano concerto series (review), another twofer, in which Stephen Hough, recorded in 2009 and supported by the Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä, performs all three of Tchaikovsky’s numbered piano concerti as well as the Concert fantasia. As an intriguing bonus, Hough also undertakes a fascinating comparative exercise by including both the original Tchaikovsky (13:27) and the Siloti (7:06) versions of the second concerto’s central movement, as well as his own subtler and, indeed, slightly extended take on it (13:55). All are delivered with what MusicWeb’s reviewer, the late Ian Lace, rightly described as “sparkling brilliance, imagination, dynamism and exceptional pianistic colour”. Thankfully, as we can now hear, even its 50 years’ age and a layer or two of cotton wool can’t deny much the same admiring description to Emil Gilels’s performance of the second piano concerto.

Rob Maynard

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