Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No 3; Mozart: Piano Concerto K488

The Guardian 80

Sokolov/BBC Philharmonic/Tortelier/Mahler CO/Pinnock
(Deutsche Grammophon)

Like buses, three new recordings of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto have appeared at once. The most startling of them, with Grigory Sokolov as the soloist, is in fact not exactly new; Sokolov no longer plays concertos or records in studios, and this performance dates back to the 1995 Proms in London, where he made one of his rare British appearances with the BBC Philharmonic under Yan-Pascal Tortelier. His account of Mozart’s A major Concerto K488 is from a concert, too, at the Salzburg festival a decade later.

Sokolov’s Rachmaninov playing is immense and, in its mix of supreme fluency and ardent intensity, easily bears comparison with the best versions available on disc. His account of K488 is just as compelling; the opening piano solo in the slow movement is as fine a demonstration as any of how less can mean so much more in a performance. Unfortunately, though, the release suffers from a major technical issue. After Sokolov’s titanic performance of the first-movement cadenza, the piano is audibly never the same again; the one note that is badly out of tune becomes more and more intrusive, especially in lyrical passages.