Ilan Volkov - Piano Concertos 1 & 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

A. Glazunov - Piano Concertos 1 & 2 [COMPACT DISCS] date 07/18/2000

The music of Fernando Lopes-Graca, one of the most significant Portuguese composers of the twentieth-century, went through several phases of development. Though rooted in folk music, it absorbed influences not only from much earlier composers such as Scarlatti and Seixas, but from contemporaries such as Bartok. These influences are potent in the Piano Concerto No. 1 of 1940, a highly personal, atmospheric and superbly orchestrated work imbued with bittersweet romanticism. Though the Iberian Baroque permeates it's finale, the Piano Concerto No. 2 is a much darker and more ambivalent work, marking a new milestone in his development.

Beethoven's first two piano concertos share an abundance of lyric and virtuosic qualities. Concerto No. 1 in C major is expansive and richly orchestrated with a sublime slow movement that is tender and ardent, and a finale full of inventive humor. Concerto No. 2 in B flat major marries energy with elegance, reserving poetic breadth for it's slow movement and quirky wit for the finale. Also included is the jovial Rondo, WoO 6, which Beethoven originally intended to be the finale of Concerto No. 2.