This is the second double-CD set from Philips Duo devoted to great piano concertos of the 20th century. The recordings are by various artists from Philips’ stable, and one at least is a top-drawer recommendation–Alfred Brendel’s unsurpassed account of the Schoenberg piano concerto is of exceptional importance. But the great advantage of mid-priced packages like this is that they afford collectors on a budget a useful opportunity to acquire high-class recordings at a fairly modest outlay. For starters, the remarkable performance of Prokofiev’s second concerto comes from Alexander Toradze and the Kirov Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, recorded (presumably during one of the orchestra’s tours away from its home base) in Mikkeli, Finland, in 1995. There are few more arresting and powerful accounts in the catalog, and Toradze plays with a forcefulness and authority that’s suggestive of Martha Argerich. Zoltan Kocsis is soloist in a swiftly flowing account of the Rachmaninov Third, taped in 1983 with Edo de Waart and the San Francisco Symphony. For my taste, it doesn’t compare with enduring classic readings such as Ashkenazy’s famous version with Previn and the London Symphony on Decca, probably still your best bet in this work.
Disc 2 opens with a richly mellifluous and sensual version of the G major Ravel concerto, this time from Kocsis on home ground, with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. It’s revealing to contrast this account with either Argerich’s famous recording or Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s glitzy Decca account from Montreal. Kocsis is the more individual and spontaneous, and Thibaudet has unmistakable “French Polish”, though neither performance really matches Argerich’s. Stephen Kovacevich made this recording of the Bartok second concerto as far back as 1968, but the performance still sounds very good for its pre-digital vintage, and the collaboration with Colin Davis generates a reading of impressive, forthright brilliance. Finally, there’s Alfred Brendel’s pioneering 1971 version of the Schoenberg concerto, a recording that it’s hard to imagine will ever be seriously challenged, though Mitsuko Uchida’s new version may. These varied and fascinating offerings are an exceptional bargain at the price, and the new digital transfers are uniformly superb.
