Winning a major piano competition brings perils as well as glory. Witness the great but vulnerable John Ogdon in the 1960s, condemned to hurtle round the globe bashing out Tchaikovksy’s First Piano Concerto, the work that famously clinched his success in the 1962 Moscow competition. Even if a competitor avoids its coils, the romantic pomp and luscious melodies of the Concerto No 1 in B flat soon slither round every star pianist’s hands. Concert promoters want it. Recording companies want it.
So what is the major item in the first concerto disc by Uzbekistan’s rising glory, 24-year-old Behzod Abduraimov? Not that he flinches for a moment: the winner of the 2009 London International Piano Competition tackles Tchaikovsky’s familiar notes with exemplary aplomb. Right from those ringing, throat-clearing chords his playing conveys grandeur and depth. He’s the absolute master of all he surveys; the master too in a recording balance that places Italy’s national radio orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, in the equivalent of the glove compartment. Fair enough in a work like this, though the tactic wouldn’t work in Mozart.
Tchaikovsky’s spacious plushness contrasts sharply with the jostling energy of Prokofiev’s Concerto No 3. This was Abudraimov’s competition calling card and he still plays it with supersonic drive, daunting clarity and lots of hard glitter. Here, the orchestra and conductor Juraj Valčuha seem more like equal partners, scattering bright colours in a close recording that pitches the listener right into the fray. Separating the two concertos by a soothing solo snippet from Swan Lake was a wise move; without that, I might have needed to cool my head under a tap.
Another 24-year-old hits Tchaikovsky’s concerto in Radio Days (three stars), a compendium of early and previously unreleased radio recordings by Nelson Freire. His Tchaikovsky dates from 1969, though Freire excels much more on his 1979 account of Liszt No 2, with Bavarian Radio forces conducted by Eleazar de Carvalho, who apparently sometimes marked beats by thumping his chest as if he were Tarzan. Listening to this blistering recording, I am not at all surprised. (Out now, Decca Classics)