Welcome to Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Home to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 1 & 4 Vasily Petrenko conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Simon Trpčeski

Add to Basket

Simon Trpčeski's recording of Rachmaninov's Piano Concertos 2 and 3 was one of the most acclaimed and best-selling classical releases of 2010. His frequent collaborations with Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra are justly celebrated. Together they complete the Rachmaninov canon with this highly-anticipated follow up of Concertos 1 and 4, and the Paganini Rhapsody.

Diapason d'Or - August 2011

"A pianist and conduct who were surely born to play Rachmaninov’s concertos. Trpceski, Petrenko and the RLPO here join forces for the eagerly awaited follow-up to their Avie recording of Rachmaninov’s Second and Third Piano Concertos. Expectations are fully realised in performances of the highest order." Gramophone September 2011

CD of the Week / 5 Stars - The Sunday Times, 3 July 2011

"The young Macedonian virtuoso teams up again with Petrenko’s blossoming RLPO to complete their outstanding survey of Rachmaninov’s work for piano and orchestra. This programme of the two “unpopular” concertos – the early F sharp minor, completed in 1892, when the composer was only 18, and the late G minor, of 1926 – and the immortal Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is finer still than their coupling of the eternally beloved Second and Third Concertos. What I find so captivating about these superb young musicians’ Rachmaninov is its lack of bombast and gooey false sentiment. They give due emotional weight to the sense of loss Rachmaninov conveys in the andante of the F sharp minor – revised in 1917, as he was contemplating departure from Russia during the revolution – and in the large of the G minor, permeated with nostalgia and homesickness for the country he would never see again. Trpceski captures the music’s protean mood switches to perfection, his mercurial fingers dashing off the vivace flourishes of the outer movements and the most brilliant Paganini variations with insouciant bravura and brio. He makes this staggeringly difficult music sound easy and beguilingly light of its feet. These performances are a meeting of dazzling musical minds, offering an untraditional approach that never sounds wilful, attention-seeking or eccentric. "

“Vasily Petrenko and Simon Trpčeski complete their cycle of Rachmaninov’s music for piano and orchestra in some style. Trpčeski seems to relish the edgier, mercurial aspects to these three works, and his approach makes the neglected First Concerto really glitter. …. Trpčeski is alive to the sheer fun to be had, and his impetuosity is neatly matched by Petrenko’s Liverpool players. … Avie’s sound, recorded in Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, is refulgent, warm and detailed.”
The Arts Desk, August 2011

More acclaim for the recording: 

"The virtuosi Macedonian Simon Trpčeski and St Petersburg-born Vasily Petrenko combine in taut, poetic performances with notably coruscating brass playing from an RLPO on impressive and expressive form." Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian

"As with their Avie coupling of the Second and Third Concertos (AV2192) last year, Simon Trpceski, Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO bring understanding and instinct to their performances, and take to heart the different temperaments that each of the three works on this recording manifests.
If the First Concerto is essentially music of youthful optimism, the Fourth is shot through with far more hints of deep nostalgia and, at times, agonised brooding. The Fourth Concerto in the “definitive” 1941 version, played here, is markedly different from the one Rachmaninoff conceived in the 1920s. The concerto’s outer movements have a new, almost menacing energy and darker undercurrents that this performance brings out.
Here, as in the First Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody, the judicious variety of touch and colour, and ability to reveal important details of the music, combine with an expressive maturity to make these performances utterly compelling." Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph

"...the pianist and conductor are at one, the piano hopping, skipping, and jumping around the Paganini variations, and both the piano and the orchestra countering with the funeral tune. Trpceski displays his dazzling finger work and Petrenko his unfailingly sympathetic support to produce a remarkably moving new interpretation of the score." Classical Candor

"Trpceski is among the most subtle and elegant of pianists, and it is good to have the chance to hear him in the lesser-known first and fourth concerti. " Birmingham Post