Music

Album reviews, plus Ken Walton interviews Dame Evelyn Glennie

There’s natural affinity between the piano concertos of Ravel and Gershwin. The backgrounds of these composers may have been entirely different, but the common jazz elements of the Ravel G major Concerto and Gershwin’s F major Concerto make them obvious bedfellows. Soloist Denis Kozhukhin finds delicious warmth and subtlety in the Ravel G major, and an expansiveness that is fulltoned and lyrically sumptuous. The unaccompanied opening to the slow movement is poetry in motion; the bustling finale a virtuoso tour de force. There is abundant poise, too, in the beautifully-tempered playing of the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande under Kazuki Yamada. The Gershwin concerto is a vehicle for greater showiness, which this performance provides in abundance. Kozhukhin finishes with Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, colouring its mood swings with solidity and flamboyance.