The chief attraction here is the unusual coupling which pairs two sharply opposed examples of Russian romanticism, and although the reasons for the neglect of Scriabin's Piano Concerto are not hard to fathom (its lyrical and decorative flights are essentially inward-looking), its haunting, bittersweet beauty, particularly in the central Andante is hard to resist. Demidenko's own comments, quoted in the accompanying booklet, are scarcely less intense and individual than his performance: ''in the ambience, phrasing and cadence of his music we meet with a world almost without skin, a world of nerve-ends where the slightest contact can bring pain''. His playing soars quickly to meet the music's early passion head on, and in the first piu mosso scherzando he accelerates to produce a brilliant lightening of mood. His flashing fortes in the Andante's second variation are as volatile as his pianissimos are starry and refined in the finale's period reminiscence, and although he might seem more tight-lipped, less expansive than Ashkenazy in his celebrated Decca recording (and less openly affectionate than Badura-Skoda in a long-deleted Nixa LP, 10/53), he is arguably more dramatic and characterful than either.
Demidenko's Tchaikovsky, too, finds him ferreting out and sifting through every texture, forever aiming at optimum clarity. The temperature drops surprisingly in the first chordal decoration of the theme and the rhythm of the Allegro con spirito (the start of the concerto proper) is tame. The second subject seems so lost in pained reflection that it is almost like the commencement of a slow movement, and shifts from sobriety to rhetorical passion can be made a trifle self-consciously. Yet while this is hardly among the greatest Tchaikovsky Firsts on record (for me Argerich, whether magisterial on DG or helter-skelter on Philips, 7/82—nla, remains the finest of all), it is often gripping and mesmeric. The orchestra responds admirably to their mercurial soloist and certainly come alight at key moments in both concertos. The recorded balance is not always ideal and the piano sound is sometimes uncomfortably taut.'