RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No 2 GRIEG Piano Concerto Op 16
Sa Chen back with Foster for two staple concertos
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Edvard Grieg, Sergey Rachmaninov
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Pentatone
Magazine Review Date: 06/2012
Media Format: Super Audio CD
Media Runtime: 66
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: PTC5186444
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 |
Sergey Rachmaninov, Composer
Gulbenkian Orchestra Lawrence Foster, Conductor Sa Chen, Piano Sergey Rachmaninov, Composer |
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra |
Edvard Grieg, Composer
Edvard Grieg, Composer Gulbenkian Orchestra Lawrence Foster, Conductor Sa Chen, Piano |
Author: Jed Distler
For her part, pianist Sa Chen thankfully eschews the attention-getting phrase elongations and foreground/background vagueness that spelt disaster for her previous Chopin collaborations with Foster. She projects the rolling passagework and multi-layered textures of the Rachmaninov’s first movement with plenty of power and sweep, although her bland, directionless playing throughout much of the aforementioned slow movement leaves the conductor holding the expressive bag, so to speak. But her entrance in the Allegro scherzando pales besides the thunderbolt impact and speed with which Richter/Wislocki and Zimerman/Ozawa pin your ears to the wall, while her swirling passagework is suave and accomplished without matching these pianists’ incisive, pointed standards. In and of itself, Chen’s well-modulated, regulation pianism does justice to the Grieg Concerto’s solo part but she offers little that her recorded competitors have not done better. For example, her generalised articulation of the animato e molto leggerio first-movement sequences lacks Murray Perahia’s specificity and her dynamic eruptions in the first movement cadenza are sectionalised rather than connected like Howard Shelley’s, not to mention Arthur Rubinstein’s 1961 finale, with its captivating combination of tonal refinement and joie de vivre. Certainly collectors seeking this particular coupling on SACD won’t be disappointed, yet the catalogue competition speaks for itself.
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
SubscribeGramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.