Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No.4
Alain Lefèvre; Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; Kent Nagano
Analekta AN 2 9288
This concerto is at once a reminder of Rachmaninov’s consistent and recognizable musical language. The style of lush orchestral washes led by strings against broad piano chords reminds the listener of familiar passages in the previous concertos. There is, however, a new element of modernity in this work that for Rachmaninov seems to have been a long time in coming.
Pianist Alain Lefèvre is a powerful player. At the keyboard he creates the kind of Lisztian fear that instruments must surely have when they’re about to be shaken to the core. He is an exemplar of the player that the Rachmaninov Fourth needs. Nothing less will do. Lefèvre and Nagano explode out of the starting gate with so much energy that it’s tempting to think your CD player has started the final movement by mistake. They make the perfect team required to navigate Rachmaninov’s new polyrhythms strewn throughout the work. They embrace the numerous harmonic collisions without reservation and offer a highly charged performance that sets the heart racing. In all, this performance can actually be a little disturbing for anyone unaccustomed to hearing Rachmaninov’s dark side so eloquently referenced here by Lefèvre and Nagano.
By contrast, and a well-programmed one it is, Scriabin’s Prometheus draws the OSM into repertoire it does so well. While of the same generation, Scriabin turns Rachmaninov’s flirtations with modernism into a full nuptial embrace. It’s all here, the French school of the early 20th century excited with rich colours on broad canvas and using every potential offered by the piano to gild the orchestral palette.
