Out of these two concertos, the Tchaikovsky gets sonic and interpretive first prize. Its famous opening alone encapsulates everything that’s good here: a razor-sharp orchestra with brass and winds proudly up front, a wide yet never outsized dynamic range, and a pianist whose controlled bravura never turns the music into a stunt. Maazel, for his part, pairs better with Ashkenazy than he did nearly a decade later with Emil Gilels (EMI).
Look to the more febrile accounts by Argerich, Cziffra, or Horowitz for surging accelerandos and tensile inner voices. And I still gravitate towards Cliburn’s slightly more flexible phrasing in the work’s lyrical sections, plus the reserves of sparkling articulation Arthur Rubinstein could still conjure up at the tender age of 76 (his 1963 RCA recording). All in all, though, the Ashkenazy/Maazel Tchaik One rates high among this war-horse’s top recorded contenders.
The pianist’s Schumann Concerto is not quite in this class. It is, to be sure, tastefully and intelligently played, graced by some of the loveliest first-desk orchestral solos I’ve ever heard in this work. But the Intermezzo’s rubatos border on mannerism, and slacken the movement’s flow. The finale is sober and dutiful rather than radiant, and Ashkenazy undercharacterizes the composer’s thickets of cross-rhythms. Moreover, the bleak, resonant engineering is inferior to the warm, detailed sonics of my preferred reference versions: Arrau/Dohnanyi (Eloquence), Moravec/ Neumann (Supraphon), Rubinstein/Giulini (RCA) and Perahia/Abbado (Sony). And if you can deal with Rudolf Serkin’s gaunt, wiry sound, his impassioned traversal with Ormandy shouldn’t be missed. --classicstoday.com
The pianist’s Schumann Concerto is not quite in this class. It is, to be sure, tastefully and intelligently played, graced by some of the loveliest first-desk orchestral solos I’ve ever heard in this work. But the Intermezzo’s rubatos border on mannerism, and slacken the movement’s flow. The finale is sober and dutiful rather than radiant, and Ashkenazy undercharacterizes the composer’s thickets of cross-rhythms. Moreover, the bleak, resonant engineering is inferior to the warm, detailed sonics of my preferred reference versions: Arrau/Dohnanyi (Eloquence), Moravec/ Neumann (Supraphon), Rubinstein/Giulini (RCA) and Perahia/Abbado (Sony). And if you can deal with Rudolf Serkin’s gaunt, wiry sound, his impassioned traversal with Ormandy shouldn’t be missed. --classicstoday.com
