Search - Evgeny Kissin :: Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3

Kissin, Ashkenazy, London Philharmonia: Prokofiev P Ctos 2 &

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 06/02/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you like these two Prokofiev piano concertos, you should probably get them right away per this disc. These readings are a crazy, bold, brash mix of lyrical song, motoric industrial display, tonal colors, and perceptible Russian folk music inflections (shotgun wedded to French musical sophistication and clarity).



Yes, a mish mash, and what a mish mash. Dazzling. It's too much, really. It shouldn't work, musically. Yet what a careening ride in a fast machine?



Kissin recorded the first and third piano concertos under Abbado in Berlin, early on in his DGG career. Those readings were stunning with promise and energy; but perhaps Abbado's influence tended to blend and smooth over, softening some of the wildest Prokofiev-rough edges?



Ashkenazy has himself done a complete piano concerto set under Andre Previn with the LSO. I hold that older set in high regard, tilted just a tad in favor of the pianist over the band and conductor. Other complete sets have something to offer, no doubt. Toradze with Gergiev just misses being the total bomb. Beroff is a fine Prokofiev pianist, but I have also-ran doubts about Kurt Masur in Leipzig. Krainev with Kitaenko in Frankfurt is a better pianist-conductor-band match, to my ears. I really like Kun Woo Paik, and feel that most of the time Antoni Wit keeps up with PNRSO. Finally, bravo - to Testament for re-releasing the John Browning concertos with Leinsdorf in Boston.



My lasting touchstones have highlighted single disc readings. Andrei Gavrilov in the first piano concerto, LSO, Simon Rattle conducting. I like the second piano concertos by Yundi Li, Nikolai Demidenko, Igor Ardasev. My third concerto fav of all time is an old EMI disc, John Browning (again under Leinsdorf, with the London Philharmonia - coupled with a superlative Ravel concerto). Followed closely by Dickran Atamian in Seattle with Gerard Schwarz conducting. (Coupled with a scary, hell-bent, fire-breathing reading of the Khachaturian piano concerto). For my fourth concerto I return to Browning and Demidenko, and truth is, I can enjoy nearly any of the other fourth concertos from the complete sets. Same with the fifth concerto, plus Richter single discs.



This new second concerto from Kissin is his first reading. The work tends to be rising in popularity, thanks not least to the devoted advocacy it has received on discs. Way back when, about the only stereo recording one might find of it in USA shops was Charles Munch leading the Boston Symphony with Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer at the keyboard. Even when Browning was brave enough to do it later, again in Boston as part of the old RCA complete Prokofiev series, the second concerto was hardly well-known on disc or in the live concert halls.



Many worthwhile readings have already banished the cobwebs and mistaken perceptions of the second concerto. Kissin and Ashkenazy go right to the top. Provided that you want your Prokofiev to be a wild and crazy and colorful mix of exuberant, grab bag influences. This reading of the second concerto seems to touch all possible bases in passing. It has moments of hot-house Late Romantic Russian fervor. The musical panorama is big and bold and brilliant, as if Prokofiev were not entirely turning his back on Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Grieg. Did Scriabin bequeath a touch of madness to the composer of these concertos? Was it those famed Rubinstein brothers, Anton and Nikolai?



This reading has abundant drive and motor skills. Kissin and the band under Ashkenazy stalk, run, and pounce in the best predator-hunter Prokofiev manner. Their reading achieves a sort of graced, manic animal splendor, equaled but hardly exceeded by other readings available. What fine, subtle threads of gilded, Ravel-like irony and urbanity run through all four movements.



Next the new Kissin third concerto shoots across our skies, a musical comet flying far beyond the former trajectory of his outing under Abbado. Perhaps thanks to the deep knowledge that Ashkenazy has of the score, this reading is a vibrant partnership, keyboard with band with conductor. Yes, competitive with Browning and Leinsdorf on the old EMI disc. Again, the reading is a take no prisoners, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead affair. All the heady influences streaming through the reading of the second concerto are also loose, bursting all the dams, flooding through this third. I especially enjoy the wildness that comes across, rather like one expects to hear from Prokofiev in an exciting reading of his Alexander Nevsky cantata.



I have long cherished the Ashkenazy reading of the Prokofiev fifth symphony (Amsterdam Concertgebouw, on Decca) for its brilliant musical colors and folk-music inflected phrasings. All the symphony movements are deeply touched with fabulous Russian soul in ways that most modernist readings of the symphony do not quite manage to express. It must have been a good day in the studio, since even readings captured direct from Russian with famous Russian bands fall short of that one, to my ears.



Ashkenazy here brings a similar kind of muscular, colorful, folk-music inflected phrasing to what the band does in both concertos. This pays huge dividends, musically. The regular red book PCM recording captures all this in gorgeous, big stage sound. Per the booklet, these performances were taken from live concerts at Royal Festival Hall. (January, 2008) Thankfully, audience noises are not a problem, nor do we have to forbear with applause at the end.



No doubts, five stars. If this is disc one of a complete set, we really have something happy to anticipate. Thanks. Bravo."

Extraordinary intellectual, emotional and technical power an

Peter B. Behr | New York, NY, USA | 06/09/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the divide between 5 star and 2-3 star ratings, I am in the the 5 star camp, though for somewhat independent reasons.

It states clearly on the CD that it was recorded in concert. I heard the

concerti in London and Birmingham. I know Evgeny Kissin also played them

elsewhere. So, while we do not know what was recorded where, we do know

that the recordings were live in concert. It makes no sense for EMI to misrepresent that, and with his painstaking integrity, Mr Kissin would never approve it.

Sometimes live performances can sound a little hollow or flat when recorded live, and there may be coughing, applause or other noise. These recordings are just the music, beautifully >recorded with great immediacy, and played with extraordinary intellectual, emotional and technical power and thrilling brilliance.

I love the spirited energy of the performances and the way the pianist expressed that with a lyrical late romantic roundness of the sound. I certainly like other performances of these works too, starting with Sergei Prokofiev himself, and including Messrs Vladimir Ashkenazy and Grigory Sokolov. As with Mr Kissin's Beethoven cycle, my only reservation is about the orchestral accompaniment. That does not affect my rating overall because the soloist's playing is so terrific, just as I would not want Prokofiev's own performance any less because of the orchestral support he received from the London Symphony under Piero Coppola. Here, while I think the orchestral support is ok, the more I listen to these performances, the more I wish they had the energy to match the support of the Chicago Symphony under Andrew Davis for the soloist's Beethoven cycle, or the unreleased Brahms concerti with the Boston Symphony under James Levine, which were wonderfully matched musically, and I suppose a pairing with the Berlin Philharmonic could be interesting. I am glad to have Mr Kissin's performances on this CD, which I think Prokofiev would probably very much too, and am happy to give it a 5-star recommendation.

"

No fears, Kissin is masterful in Prokofiev

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 06/11/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"What in the world would a newcomer to this CD, or to Amazon's review system, take away from the posts so far? Certainly not a coherent picture musically. The windy postings in the one- and five-star category are unusually eccentric. The blogosphere unleashes strange minds.



Approaching this CD without prejudice, I'm in agreement with Mr. Behr, who points to vivid, visceral recorded sound -- the piano is caught with real depth and impact -- and Kissin's extraordinary technical prowess. In terms of keyboard mastery, we are at the very highest echelon, the territory of Horowitz and Pollini. Kissin is perfectly at ease in the Prokofiev Second, making child's play of passages that are often banged out with effort. Prokofiev's keyboard idiom embraced motor rhythms and the percussive side of the piano's range, as did Bartok. The Second takes his modernism to a farther extreme than any other of the five concertos, which accounts for its neglect, both in the past and present. Kissin is less bombastic than most, and his mastery over the idiom cannot be faulted. He may be dubious in Beethoven, but in Russian music he's unassailable.



The Third Cto. is Prokofiev's most popular by far, and the range of great recordings extends back as far as William Kapell in the early Fifties to Gary Graffman in the Sixties (with George Szell as a razor-sharp but elegant accompanist) and Argerich among contemporaries. Kissin re4turns to the work for the third time here, competing with his younger self on RCA and DG. Both of those recordings were powerful, elegant, elegiac, and witty, capturing the shifting moods of a mercurial work. I was a bit afraid that he would lose his earlier lightness and brightness, given that Kissin's development has been in the direction of barnstorming and heavy-handedness.



There's no doubt that this reading is a barnstormer, not to mention that it's built on a somewhat grander scale than the earlier ones (adding over 3 min. in timing to the RCA account). What we've gained is a sense of overwhelming technical command, abetted by EMI's close-up miking of the piano, which thunders away almost frighteningly. The theme and variations that are the heart of the concerto exhibit a breathtaking range from delicate pointillism to sinuous melody, and the most demanding passagework whisks by without banging. Harking back to Kapell, I don't hear as much sheer vivacity, and Argerich is more volatile and abandoned. (Richter never left a recording of either concerto, by the way, commercially or through pirates of live concerts.) One reason that Kissin so dominates this performance is that Ashkenazy takes a back seat with a straightforward accompaniment that is fine in its way but rather faceless. However, the orchestra plays gorgeously throughout.



I've taken extra space to describe a performance that previous postings have warped to fit the reviewer's prejudice. If you want Kissin's Prokofiev third, all his recordings are top choices. It's really the pairing that will determine which one fits your collection."