Though not explicitly intended as such, Piano Classics’ comprehensive Rachmaninov set is a brilliant showcase of what the label has done so successfully over the last five years – identifying and recording some of brightest talents among today’s exceptional generation of young pianists. With six different musicians involved on these discs there are unevennesses, but none of the playing is less than very good, and some is breathtaking.
Most of the recordings were made during the past five years. Some have been released by Piano Classics as single discs, while some, such as Elisa Tomellini’s busy roundup of Rachmaninov’s early piano pieces, are new. There are exceptions: Alexander Ghindin’s collection of the early Morceaux de Fantaisie and Rachmaninov’s assorted transcriptions dates back to the mid 1990s, while Nikolai Lugansky’s performances of the Second Piano Sonata (in the revised 1931 version) and the Corelli Variations, come from a Channel Classics disc made before Lugansky won the silver medal at the 1994 Tchaikovsky competition. While it’s odd that none of the label’s regular stable of pianists have made recent recordings of the sonata and the variations, which are two of Rachmaninov’s greatest works, the young Lugansky’s torrential playing doesn’t seem out of place among the precocious brilliance here.
The discs that really stand out are from Lukas Geniušas and Zlata Chochieva. Geniušas, who came second in the 2010 Chopin and 2015 Tchaikovsky piano competitions, plays the complete preludes with such wonderful control, lucidity and poise it’s hard to believe the recording was taken live from a recital at the Moscow Conservatory in 2013. Chochieva, though, is the real discovery; her account of the two sets of Études-Tableaux, performances of huge emotional scope and intense drama, are as fine as any on disc, while she revels in the dark textures of the First Sonata and makes the Chopin Variations seem a much more convincing work than it can often seem. It’s worth buying this set just for Chochieva and Geniušas’s performances, though the rest of it isn’t exactly shabby.
