Even after the triumph of his First Symphony in 1925, Shostakovich was 'hot' enough as a pianist to wonder which way his career should go. He entered and won a prize in the first Chopin Competition two years later, and at various times in his life wavered between regrets at not playing more in public and the realization that he never fully acquired the nerve a solo performer needs.
His recorded performances date mainly, like those on the present disc, from the 1950s. At that time he was just beginning to feel the effect of the hand condition that was to plague his last years, and his technique was in any case not in the groove to the extent that it had been in his youth. So the playing is not always comfortable to listen to–—there are plenty of hasty, swallowed-up passages and approximations. Nevertheless, the excitement and nervous tension for the most part suit the character of the outer movements of the concertos, while the slow movements have an impressive stoical lyricism.
These performances are certainly essential encounters for any enthusiast or performer of this music, in that they suggest the kind of licence Shostakovich would or would not permit himself. Like Rachmaninov, he was plainly concerned above all with the momentum of his music, rather than its immediate emotional character. The concerto performances issued here come in at 16'02'' and 20'16'' respectively, knocking about 90 seconds off each of the above-listed French recordings he made around the same time, themselves already something of a byword for freneticism. The cost is some ragged surface detail, though not much more than in the EMI versions, but the reward is even more drive and sustained excitement, of the kind no accuracy-minded player could ever generate.
The other plus for the new issue is a degree of extra bite and earthiness in the orchestral playing especially in the Second Concerto, which also has a better balance between piano and orchestra. For all the scorn he has attracted (not least in Volkov's Testimony—Hamish Hamilton: 1979), Alexander Gauk must have had something special to have generated such a vivid orchestral response. In the First Concerto on the other hand, there is a sizeable minus in the nervous trumpet playing. And the recording itself, though generally fuller in tone than the EMI, is of uncertain status—for instance the laryngeally challenged audience in the first movement of the First Concerto has miraculously disappeared by the time of the finale.
A straight choice would probably come down to the presence of the Cello Sonata on the new issue—as fine an account from Rostropovich and the composer as the one on LP available long ago on HMV (10/76—nla). Collectors who own that will probably go for the EMI version of the concertos, with the solo Fantastic Dances as a coupling; those who do not will surely want the new release. Shostakovich-lovers will inevitably want, and derive enormous pleasure from, both.'