Shostakovich: Piano Concertos & Preludes

Dmitri Shostakovich
Concerto for piano, trumpet and strings in C minor, op.35 (1933)
1. Allegretto Allegro vivace (attacca)
2. Lento (attacca)
3. Moderato (attacca)
4. Allegro con brio

Piano Concerto No 2 in F, op. 102 (1957)
5. Allegro
6. Andante( attacca)
7. Allegro

24 Preludes for piano, op.34 (1932-33)
8. No 1 Moderato
9. No 2 Allegretto
10. No 3 Andante
11. No 4 Moderato
12. No 5 Allegro vivace
13. No 6 Allegretto – Moderato
14. No 7 Andante
15. No 8 Allegretto
16. No 9 Presto
17. No 10 Moderato non troppo – Allegretto Moderato non troppo
18. No 11 Allegretto
19. No 12 Allegro non troppo
29. No 13 Moderato
21. No 14 Adagio
22. No 15 Allegretto
23. No 16 Andantino
24. No 17 Largo
25. No 18 Allegretto
26. No 19 Andantino
27 No 20 Allegretto furioso
28. No 21 Allegretto poco moderato
29. No 22 Adagio
30. No 23 Moderato
31. No 24 Allegretto

“Piano and Circumstance” – Musings on the Music and its Context ©
“Shostakovich.” Go on, say it. The very sound of that word makes my ears water. Why? Listen, and I’ll tell you why.
Foremost is his endlessly involving music. To summarise it in one word (I’d have to say “big”. ln what way “big”). ln every way – ranging from massive to minuscule, brazen to balmy, crude to contemplative, cerebral to simple. Bigger still is how he enfolds and secretes different facets one inside another – his music’s like an onion! You imagine you’ve “known” a Shostakovich work for years, then suddenly fall through seemingly safe ice into entirely unsuspected realms of meaning.
His life too is a spellbinding story, of heady success and stupefying misfortune, lit for a gripping epic of the silver screen. This shy, nervous, sensitive soul looked like he’d run a mile if you so much as said “boo”. Yet when confronted by the most appalling, protracted threat Shostakovich summoned the will and courage to endure – and survive. However, the miracle was the way he survived. Music is an ambiguous art-form, but Shostakovich made an art-form of ambiguity itself- his means of survival and counter-attack.

RELEASE DATE: MAY 2002

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 601

EAN: 5709499601006

David Nice in BBC Music Magazine (March 2003):

Performance: 5 stars Sound: 4 stars

Danacord’s Shostakovich disc was the second I heard this year, and it already looks like being one of the best. So what bowls me over about Marshev and company? First, perhaps, amazement at the sophisticated high standards not only from the soloist but from a regional Swedish orchcstra and a Finnish conductor who do everything in their power to make the phrases leap off the printed page. You only have to hear the piano land on the head of an especially vivid trumpeter in the opening bars of the First Concerto, or the unsurpassably characterful bassoons at the start of the Second, to know the kind of company Shostakovich is keeping here. And Marshev is a phenomenon: master of every mood from strip-cartoon crispness to thundering monster, but above all a controlling sensibility of intelligence and feeling. His concerto performances join Shostakovich (EMI) and the dazzling Bronfmann (RCA) right at the top of the list.