Piano Concerto No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 3
Kapelmeister KAP 009
Kapelmeister KAP 009
The Russian composer Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov was born on 10 June 1913. He has written three symphonies, four piano concertos, two violin concertos, two cello concertos, operas, operettas, ballets, chamber music, incidental music and film music. He studied composition in Moscow with Shebalin and piano with Heinrich Neuhaus. His Piano Concerto No. 1 is a product of his student days. The Symphony No. 1 was his graduation exercise. His activities since 1948 as Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers drew down considerable wrath for his criticism of Miaskovsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. He remained Secretary until the collapse of the USSR. In 2003 UNESCO awarded him the Mozart Medal.
You need to discard your neatly parcelled up preconceptions before hearing this disc. We are all so conditioned to expect dross from those condemned by the victor’s history. Whatever the rights and wrongs we would do well to listen to the music and forget the irrelevant ad hominem arguments. That’s why Robert Simpson’s BBC Radio 3 Innocent Ear programme was such a refreshing experience – in it he would play a piece without announcing what it was until the music was over.
The four movement First Concerto is a pretty early piece from heady times for the young student composer. Its combination of brusque muscular virtuosity partakes somewhat of the cut glass writing of Prokofiev in his later piano concertos. This is viscerally exciting writing which Shostakovich is perhaps parodying in the last movement of his Second Piano Concerto of 1960. There is a most poetic slow movement whose drum roll final note runs attacca into the detonation and propulsion of the Allegro third movement. The transition is bumpy and clipped on this recording. The finale’s peaceful introduction makes a deeply satisfying incision into steppe loneliness carolled out by clarinet and bassoon before more gripping virtuosity akin to the scherzo-adrenaline of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto and the piano concertos of Kabalevsky. However Khrennikov plies the listener with meditative romantic Miaskovsky-like asides amid the headlong assaults.
The short Second Concerto is in a compact three movement form with the first dominated by an unflinching and hammered out romantic virtuosity from the pianist. This gives way to a quiet shuddering that ushers in the central Allegro con fuoco movement which is all scintillating virtuosity again somewhat in the manner we know by derivation from Shostakovich 2. Once again the transition from I to II is bumpy. The gawky grotesque humour of the Rondo Giocoso but topped off with some crystalline romance and strutted balletic bombast. It ends remarkably with the same shiver and shudder that ended the first movement. No resort is made to obvious heroic gesture.
The Third Concerto opens with a sentimental theme over which the piano pounds out a coasting ‘remora’ or quasi-echo of that theme. The piano trips the gymnastic fantastic. The orchestra joins in with more cheerfulness than has been evident in the other two concertos. The movement ends with a wonderfully atmospheric shimmer and this time there is no bump before we enter the Miaskovskian soft romance of the Moderato. Soon though the emotional heat climbs through the effortful emphasis of the piano solo. This rises to an eruption of some brazen Soviet majesty and braying minatory brass. The trajectory of the music takes us back to the same music with which the movement began. The finale is bell-like and optimistic with a few stunningly brazen moments and spectacular work from the soloist. This concerto was recorded live. There are one or two coughs and well-merited applause at the close.
All three concertos were toured by the composer across the Soviet Union and his mastery as a soloist is patent.
The Fourth Concerto is available on Kapelmeister KAP 012.
The recording is extremely immediate with the orchestra placed very close – almost in the listener’s lap.
The extensive notes are in Russian and English – side by side. The print is rather small but do persist.
Perhaps you have been enjoying the Kabalevsky piano concerto series from Naxos or Russian Revelation or Chandos or the Shostakovich piano concertos on Sony or Hyperion or EMI Classics. If so and you would like to explore similar repertoire with some unusual and provocative turns then do try out this disc.
Rob Barnett
Musicweb, December 2006
Khrennikov is a formidable pianist as he shows in his performances of the three concertos with the galvanising support of Svetlanov in the first two and Fedoseyev in the third. The First Concerto is a youthful work teeming with Prokofiev. It also contains a deliberate reminiscence, in the Andante, of the slow movement of the concerto for violin and oboe by Bach; just a hint here of Gerald Finzi’s experiments with baroque piano writing. The scherzo flirts with fugal development but doesn’t pursue it. There’s a sliver of an adagio introduction to the finale – as brief as some of Telemann’s, which seems to reinforce the baroque homage – before a helter skelter motoric finale, lashings of Rachmaninov and a very brash and cocky climax.
No. 2 is a much later work, dating from 1971. It seems to be related to the earlier work however in its evocative and long solo piano writing. It’s a shame there’s a bad piece of tracking where the first movement ends abruptly only to restart on the next track – and then ends a few moments later. Very confusing. Still the writing is for the most part high octane and virtuosic. I found the finale rather perplexing; parts of it sound like Fiddler on the Roof, like a rinky-dink Soviet-style march, there are solo piano musings and a nice long string cantilena. It’s unsettled and hobbled, perhaps deliberately so.
The Third Concerto sees lyricism alternate with a rather vulgar march theme. The first movement is overstretched for the material. The central movement sounds like a conflation of Ravel and Shostakovich and some big fat brass drama. The driving rhetoric of the finale encloses a mocking march tune. Better still is a grave interlocutory passage before the big eruption that sounds the finale’s blazing moments. It does sound forced but is met with alert applause. Throughout, the composer-soloist plays with remarkable dynamism and flair. The orchestras pitch in with unvarnished zeal as well.
Jonathan Woolf
Musicweb, December 2006