Luscious tunes and scintillating piano writing and orchestral frameworks that ensure variety, drama, and support: that’s what Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s first two piano concertos are all about. Yes, the B-flat minor work unabashedly cribs from the descending octaves and slurred two-note motive coined by Liszt for his own first concerto, while the C minor’s concluding movement is sort of a hybrid of Brahms’ Magyar-tinged finale to his D minor Concerto and leftover fireworks from Chopin’s F minor. But what a fun listening experience! Laurence Jeanningros is a solid and reliable technician who commands the difficult piano writing with admirable aplomb. She doesn’t quite match Earl Wild’s fleet panache in the First Concerto, nor Raymond Lewenthal’s rhythmic ebullience in the Second’s Finale (Lewenthal only recorded this particular movement, incidentally, not the whole concerto). For the time being, though, this is the only place you’ll find Scharwenka One and Two coupled, and Paul Freeman’s Czech National Symphony Orchestra boasts an impressive, full-throated string section. Engineering-wise, the piano is slightly forward and airlessly miked in relation to the warmly resonant orchestra. Recommended to all good Romantic Revival mavens, but don’t be without the classic Wild/Leinsdorf/Boston Scharwenka One.
