Russia’s Silver Age ‘Everest’ concertos, replicating a coupling Yuja Wang and Gustavo Dudamel recorded live for DG in 2013. Josu de Solaun, winner of the 2006 Iturbi and 2014 Enescu Competitions, has the technical measure of this music, unsurprisingly given his Manhattan training under Nina Svetlanova and Horacio Gutiérrez. The bravura moments of the Rachmaninov are physical. Interesting voicings are for the finding. The cadenza – the regular (shorter) of the composer’s two options – offsets agility with toughness. The mood is unbridled. You end up cheering. Yet has the race for home, respites along the way notwithstanding, been at the expense of phrasing and grammar? Are we elated or just relieved for the steeplechase to be over? Allowing some leeway (Lazar Berman, Cliburn, Hamelin on the slower side, Hough and Kocsis on the quicker), de Solaun’s ballpark 39 minutes is competitive. What he lacks is space to breathe. Isabel Rubio and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, a proficient outfit notwithstanding occasionally perfunctory ensemble, do well to keep up.

De Solaun imagines Prokofiev’s Second Concerto to be a ‘macabre dance where the drama of humanity intertwines with biting irony, a reflection of the times [1912‑23] witnessing the crumbling of old structures, mocking expectations, leading us to the edge of chaos’. He gives a drilled account if not always the best tooled. He’s rarely bothered with grading intensities or creating variation within quiet and loud regions. Glossed-over transitions and tempo shifts intrude awkwardly. The opening ‘legend’ vacillates, the drawn-out ruminations of Trifonov, Vinnitskaya or Avdeeva, Cherkassky’s sensually narrante curves, eluding him. Come the cadenzas, he scales rather than surmounts the first movement’s notorious terrain (fluctuating in strength, courting safety). He seems happier, as he is among the machined patterns of the Scherzo, negotiating the theatre and acceleration of the finale’s counterpart. Orchestrally, Rubio rides complex challenges, most convincingly in the third and fourth movements.

This review originally appeared in the SPRING 2025 issue of International Piano