Recording of the Month

The pianist undertakes this beautifully curated programme with trademark intelligence and mastery, says David Nice

Daniil Trifonov The Silver Age

‘Trifonov’s is a monstrously beautiful account of the titanic terror in Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto’

Silver Age

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto

No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16; Sarcasms, Op. 17; Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat major, Op. 84; Gavotta, Op. 95 No. 2; Scriabin: Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, Op. 20; Stravinsky: Serenade in A;

The Firebird Suite; Three Movements from Petrushka

Daniil Trifonov (piano); Mariinsky Orchestra/

Valery Gergiev

DG 483 5331 139:59 mins (2 discs) Not everything in this imaginatively-planned programme comes from Russia’s pre-revolutionary Silver Age. Stravinsky’s gleaming Serenade, which some would say is neo-classical, (though as so often with this composer, it’s neo-everything), dates from 1925, and the great terror of Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata spans most of the Second World War. The obviously very personal choice of the quirky Gavotte from the 1940s ballet Cinderella – one of the ten pieces the composer transcribed for piano – further extends the picture, though it’s true that the young composer had also experimented with very similar neo-classical forms. Scriabin’s Piano Concerto actually belongs to the end of the 19th century, though it’s silvery in feel.

Yet this is certainly a goldenage collection from Trifonov, and it’s admirable that these two discs are always more about the music than about him, when as a recording superstar he could have taken an easier option. If I were to choose a compendium of Russian (mostly) 20th-century works for solo piano and piano-withorchestra, this would be close.

Each interpretation is at the very top of the list, even if this is not the only way to play that