Prokofiev: The Piano Concertos

It was quite an achievement to have recorded all five Prokofiev

concertos one after the other. Vladimir Ashkenazy was at his

best in the seventies. As well as the brilliant playing he

showed deep maturity. I actually like him playing the number

three better than the way Pletnev interpreted it on a much more

recent recording. Of course I think Pletnev is a magnificent

pianist and his conductor was Rostropovitch on his recording.

All my life I have been an enormous fan of Rostropovitch. In

their recording, they deliberately take certain passages much

slower and the famed part where the piano bass leads

effectively in the slow movement, Pletnev suddenly deliberately

plays it percussively. I personally like that small section

played the usual smoother way.

I know that Ashkenazy got on particularly well playing with

Andre Previn. Previn himself being an excellent pianist. One

feels there is true understanding between Ashkenazy and Previn.

One must remember, that Ashkenazy made his New York debut in

the later fifties with Leonard Bernstein as conductor with the

New York Philharmonic playing the Prokofiev second concerto.

His playing is brilliant throughout all the concertos, but his

playing of the number two is magnificent. I have the same

recording on the orrigional L.P. I definitely feel it sounds a

little more harsh on the C.Ds. That sometimes happens when they

trasfer recordings to C.Ds.

I would still highly recommend this recording. It certanly

gives me great pleasure listening to it.

Ashkenazy together with Andre Previn conducting the LSO, give the most exhilarating performances of these piano concertos. The 3rd concerto is widely available recorded by several other top artists, and Ashkenazy's remains amongst the best out there. The the added bonus here is the fact that the same dedication and depth of understanding and communicating the music is applied to the other 4 less well known concerti, and to have them all in one budget double CD set makes this an absolute must have for Prokofiev fans, and fans of virtuoso piano playing! My personal favourite in this set is No.2 with its dark, brooding and sometimes shocking quality. It's a big contrast when compared to the more lyrical and mercurial No.3

On the face of the matter, this set should have a lot going for it. After all, here is one of Russia's most accomplished pianists performing the most notable post-romantic Russian concertos, and accompanied into the bargain by one of the world's greatest orchestras. To be sure, there is a lot to be said in favour of what we find on these two discs. The problem that I have with it comes mainly when I hear some of these concertos played by certain others, but that only highlights a lack of sheer `quality' throughout, a lack that I ought to have noticed in the first place.

We should not, I feel, let ourselves be satisfied with the recorded sound here. Up to a point it is all right. Solo and orchestra are in good balance with each other, and the tone of all participants is moderately faithful and without distortion except for a slightly tinny effect from the piano in no 2. What is missing in general is vividness, the brightness of sound that is essential to so much of Prokofiev. If you just listen to Richter in no 5 you will, I'm sure, understand immediately what I mean. By comparison Ashkenazy lacks impact, and the main reason for this lies in the recording. It is as if the engineers have put a thin muslin veil between us and the performers - we can hear it all perfectly well but the final degree of clarity is what is missing, and this is music in which such a drawback is more important than in some other music. Nor is this problem restricted to the solo, as you can quickly verify if you compare even the first few bars of the moderato movement in no 5 from the Polish orchestra with Richter on the one hand and the great LSO here with Ashkenazy and under the distinguished baton of Previn.

Then again try no 4, the left-hand only work written, like Ravel's great masterpiece, for Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right arm in WWI. Wittgenstein then professed not to understand it and declined to perform it, but if evolution had aeons ago set out to evolve a left hand perfect for the job then that left hand would surely have belonged to Rudolf Serkin. Serkin gave the work its American premiere, he plainly has no difficulty in understanding it, and neither have I, accustomed of course to having it played for me by Serkin. As with Richter in no 5, here again there is the extra sense of forwardness that I want so much. However when I hear Serkin and Ormandy in the andante and then play the Ashkenazy account for comparison I start to feel a certain misgiving about the solo playing. Serkin and Ormandy are in a rapt dialogue, whereas the effect here is a bit noncommittal, and that points up, I fear, something I have felt for many years about Ashkenazy's playing in general. I suspect that everything came too easily to him. I know what he can be like, because I still cherish his account of the Chopin studies that I bought for only pennies decades ago, and which I love for the wiry intensity of the playing. Ashkenazy's technique is to all intents infinite, and I never saw a performer less troubled by nerves in public. However something - hard to pinpoint but all too easy to sense - seems to have gone out of his playing later, in Beethoven, in Scriabin, in Chopin even and now here in Prokofiev. Put crudely, too much of his playing is just a bit ordinary.

I don't have handy versions of nos 1-3 for comparisons, but I suspect that these are the best performances in this set with or without carrying out this kind of quality check. I am not suggesting that any performance here is bad or anything remotely near bad, it is just a matter of what Prokofiev ought to sound like, can sound like, and does sound like from such as Richter and Serkin. Obviously, you may not agree with my reservations, in which case you have got a bargain here. I am not even advising against buying the set, especially if you have no intention of stressing over some ultimate degree of quality. However once I had an idea of what this ultimate degree was like I could no longer be satisfied with less. My advice is -- shop around.