Denis Kozhukhin
Tchaikovsky & Grieg Piano Concertos
(Pentatone)
IN SCOTLAND we know Denis Kozhukhin best for his Rachmaninov with the BBC SSO, but putting that composer to one side, these two works are the best known concertos in the repertoire and a brave choice for his first orchestral disc, her working with Vassily Sinaisky and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. If you want to add these old warhorses to your music library, however, there are few better places to start than here. The German Pentatone label uses the slogan "Sit back and enjoy", and that is the way to appreciate a recording that could hardly be better for its balanced capturing of the performances at the old HQ of GDR national radio. Contemporaneous but rarely heard together, the crisp opening of the finale of the Tchaikovsky No1 in B-flat minor, with soloist, strings and winds all sparkling, seems to lead quite obviously into to the famous opening of the Grieg, even if the dialogue the Norwegian sets in motion is entirely different. In the plundering of folk sources for tunes there are parallels between the two works, but really that is incidental to the sheer musicality of the work of everyone involved in these recordings.
Keith Bruce
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