It was a daring move on the 22-year-old Rachmaninov’s part to write a symphony in 1895, with Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique of 1893 still very much at the forefront of people’s minds. But the First Symphony was decisive evidence that he had shaken off the Tchaikovsky influence that had manifested itself in an earlier D minor symphonic movement: Rachmaninov was now bold in personal gesture, confident in his deployment of the orchestra and ingenious in matters of cyclical design. That the symphony fell flat at its premiere in 1897 is one of music history’s scandals; but ever since its resurrection in the 1940s the score has asserted its strengths, and also its weaknesses that astute performances can generally mask. Lan Shui has good, firm ideas in this interpretation. At times he crucially lets the music’s momentum flag in a way that does not do it any favours but he grasps the finale by the scruff of the neck in positive fashion.

The chief focus of the CD, however, is Yevgeny Sudbin’s thrilling, beautifully shaped performance of the First Piano Concerto. Sudbin plays the latter version, as most people do, and he brings to it all the youthful freshness and fluency that Rachmaninov himself observed in it. Sudbin has a natural feel for the Rachmaninov idiom: the piano-playing has depth of tone, subtlety and richness of texture, and scintillating dynamism allied to acute lyrical sensibility. The orchestra, too, is
on its mettle.