Ottorino Respighi - Piano Concerto in A minor; etc. (Konstantin Scherbakov)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

1. Piano Concerto in A minor
2. Toccata
3. Fantasia Slava

Konstantin Scherbakov, piano

Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra

Howard Griffiths, conductor

Date: 1995

Label: Naxos

-----------------------------------------------------------

Review

All these pieces are otherwise available in decent performances, but at this price how could anyone with the slightest weakness for Respighi hesitate? Scherbakov and Griffiths do a good deal more than dutifully go through the motions, the soloist in particular playing with delicacy and affection, grateful for the (quite frequent) opportunities to demonstrate how well he would play Liszt or Rachmaninov, but in the Toccata he is interested as well in Respighi's more characteristic modal vein; as a Russian, he demonstrates that this too, like so much in Respighi, was influenced by the time he spent in Russia. Russian soloist, English conductor and Slovak orchestra all enjoy the moment in the Fantasia slava where Respighi presents a morsel of Smetana in the evident belief that it's a Russian folk-dance, but the Concerto and the Fantasia, both very early Respighi, are not patronized in the slightest. The central slow section of the Concerto, indeed, achieves something like nobility, and although there is a risk of the pianism in this work seeming overblown and rhetorical, Scherbakov's fondness for Respighi's more fleet-footed manner doesn't let this happen often.

The Toccata is not so much an exercise in the neo-baroque, often though its dotted and florid figures promise it, more of an essay on how far one can be neo-baroque without giving up a post-Lisztian keyboard style and comfortable orchestral upholstery. But in a slow and florid central section, a rather melancholy aria that passes from the soloist to the oboe, to the strings and back again, there is a real quality of Bachian utterance translated not unrecognizably into a late romantic language (you may be momentarily reminded of Gerald Finzi). Scherbakov sounds touched by it, and obviously wants us to like it. Indeed these are likeable performances of music that needs that sort of help, but repays it. The recordings are more than serviceable, but each work is given only a single track.

— Michael Oliver

-----------------------------------------------------------

Ottorino Respighi (9 July 1879 – 18 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. He studied at the Liceo Musicale di Bologna, and also studied briefly with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).

***

Konstantin Scherbakov (born 1963 in Barnaul, Siberia) is a Russian-Swiss pianist. Renowned for his vast repertoire of 60 concertos, he has performed with over 70 orchestras worldwide and appeared at numerous prestigious music festivals across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Scherbakov has recorded around 60 CDs, including complete works for piano and orchestra by composers such as Medtner, Scriabin and Rachmaninov. Since 1998, he has been a professor at the Zurich University of Arts, mentoring many prize-winning students, including Yulianna Avdeeva, winner of the 2010 Chopin Competition.

-----------------------------------------------------------