APR 5666, 76:10 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] ****:
Tchaikovsky’s G Major Concerto certainly has inspired fewer adherents than its B-flat Minor companion, but many would offer this concerto as musically superior. Besides its long passages of pomp and hyperbolic ceremony, there are ample opportunities for tender, legato filigree and serene meditation. With conductor Anosov, father of Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Nikolayeva produces many splendid, even manic, runs and broken-chord passages of austere, colossal power. Her cadenza rings as powerfully as anything Gilels, Mewton-Wood, and Cherkassky left us in this extroverted work. The recording of the G Major Concerto pushes the sound forward, so much of the interior woodwind virtually disappears. But what we have from Nikolayeva and the occasional flute, horn, and bassoon, more than compensates in terms of musical audacity and wickedly fleet verve. The Andante maintains its appeal through the gorgeous parts for cello and violin–here unaccredited–so that Tchaikovsky rivals something of Beethoven’s Op. 56. Nikolayeva enters with a song without words, her playing producing a sound akin to Grieg as well as to Mendelssohn. Anosov’s strings make us want to hear this gifted conductor in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Piano, flute, strings and wind choir provide a masterful middle section, easily evocative of a ballet scene. The last movement Allegro con fuoco has Tchaikovsky’s taking pages from Saint-Saens, acrobatics galore. Arioso and pas de deux passages abound in this hybrid concept for a piano concerto, perhaps of all those by Tchaikovsky, the closest in spirit to his compatriot, Anton Rubinstein’s own bombastically songful style.
For her debut recording of Tchaikovsky’s relatively neglected, two-movement Concert Fantasy, Nikolayeva eschewed the drastically cut Siloti edition and took up the 1881 original score. Much of the woodwind and string writing recalls the airy, martial quality of the Op. 55 Suite No. 3 in G Major. The filigree of the Quasi Rondo movement often proves diversely light and then massive, the orchestral tissue thickening. We detect some after-echo and tinny reverberation in the keyboard in the otherwise clean transfers by Bryan Crimp of the original LP. The glittery cadenza could easily pass for Liszt or Liapunov, the chorale theme and consequent meditations quite resembling one of Liszt’s St. Francis Legends. The last pages of the Quasi Rondo become increasingly urbane, as if the world of Poulenc and Ibert were not far off. Nikolayeva strums the opening of the Andante cantabile, her piano sounding much like a troubadour’s guitar whose sound invites a cello accompaniment. Kondrashin’s orchestra takes up the theme, converting its rocking rhythm to a liquid barcarolle and semi-recitative. Echoes of Tchaikovsky’s own Winter Dreams Symphony infiltrate the lush aura, invaded as it is by a orchestral buzzing motif that heralds the final section, Molto vivace, a real circus affair. Nikolayeva negotiates the daunting keyboard writing with the same sweeping finesse Jeanne-Marie Darre brought to the Saint-Saens concertos, a fearlessly passionate commitment in every note.
–Gary Lemco
