Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto showcases the composer's freewheeling early style at its zany apogee. The best way to play this music is to simply foam at the mouth, go for the jugular, and jump over the top. And that's what happens in this amazing performance. The Kaliningrad Chamber Orchestra plays with characterful incision and animal magnitude that upstages more polished competitors on disc. Best known for his second place win in the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition, piano soloist Yakov Kasman may be more of a banger than a poet. But, ach, what banging! The demented glissandos whiz by like Road Runner on amphetamines, and who is that deft, tireless trumpet soloist? What a shame that this musician is not credited! Boo! The piano goes out of tune in the last movement, but what can you do? Kasman sits out while the Kaliningrad forces deliver a dignified, intensely shaded reading of the Chamber Symphony (based on Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet). Spare use of vibrato underscores the veiled, desolate quality of the largo movements that are all too often prettified. Even in its most lyrical, expansive moments, there's nothing pretty about Schnittke's Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra, with its seasick microtonal lurches, pounding non-minimalist repetitions, and tortured baroque allusions. Kasman and conductor Emmanuel Leducq-Barome embrace Schnittke's confrontational idiom with open arms, and make every bloody note count. A powerful disc all around.

--Jed Distler