Tchaikovsky · Myaskovsky: Violin Concertos

Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice - May 2003
Penguin Guide Rosette Winner

"The young and hugely impressive Vadim Repin makes his Philips début and in the company of that musical dynamo, Valery Gergiev, and his stunning Kirov Orchestra. The Tchaikovsky is well known and these performers give a fine, pungent reading, but it is the magnificent concerto by Myaskovsky that makes this disc a must. Composed in 1938, the work was first performed in Moscow in January 1939 by the 30-year-old David Oistrakh. It's a real stunner - do hear it." --Rosette (highest rating) Penguin Stereo Guide

“It's the Myaskovsky that really makes this disc a 'must-have'. His Violin Concerto was premiered by David Oistrakh in Leningrad in 1939. As with Tchaikovsky's Concerto, the opening tutti plays for less than a minute and the slow movement is touchingly lyrical. The rather melancholy first movement is built on a grand scale and includes an expansive cadenza where Repin's mastery is virtually the equal of Oistrakh's. It's forceful music, epic in scale and earnestly argued, the sort of piece that Gergiev thrives on.

Listening to Repin's Tchaikovsky Concerto (his second recording of the work) confirms just how far he's journeyed in a few years.

Tone projection is stronger, attack more aggressive and his solo demeanour seems better focused than before, far more confident and spontaneous. Mixed in with these improvements are one or two affectations, but it's a cracking performance, one of the best from the younger generation. The recording sounds like a digital update of the sort of blowsy inyour- face sonics typical of the first stereo recordings of the late 1950s. Nevertheless, a fabulous disc.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

MP3 320 · 156 MB