The Mariinsky label’s latest disc

The disc includes three piano concerti – Dmitry Shostakovich’s First and Second and Rodion Shchedrin’s Fifth, performed by Denis Matsuev and the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev.

Since it was established in 2009, one of the priorities of the Mariinsky label has been to record Russian symphony and opera music, naturally including the works of Dmitry Shostakovich which comprise a significant proportion of the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra’s repertoire. As is well known, the composer only wrote two piano concerti. The annotations for the label’s release note that “one particular feature of the First Concerto is the trumpet solo which creates a dialogue with the piano and has an independent voice that comments on the music of the piano and the orchestra.” In this work, “Shostakovich presents various musical styles and demonstrates his typical wittiness and sardonic sense of humour.” The Second Concerto, quite the reverse, “is more uniform and, in terms of character, unusually optimistic.” The slow section is a portrayal of Shostakovich’s “hauntingly beautiful music,” “almost akin to Rachmaninoff in terms of its romanticism.”

Critics have hailed Rodion Shchedrin as “one of the most significant Russian composers of the last fifty years.” Each of his six concerti for piano and orchestra mark a specific stage in the composer’s creative career. His Fifth Concerto was influenced by the music of Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.

This new disc is the second collaboration between the Mariinsky label and Denis Matsuev. The first recording was released in February 2010. The recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini has won widespread musical acclaim. Great Britain’s influential BBC Music Magazine wrote of Matsuev and Gergiev’s “darting unerringly between the music’s extremes of fantastical virtuosity and tight-reined lyricism” as faultless.