Kabalevsky | Piano Concertos, Volume 2 · Kathryn Stott · BBC Philharmonic· Neeme Järvi

The Piano Concerto No. 1 is a very different matter. Premiered in 1931, it breathes the spirit of Myaskovsky’s melancholy manner; not surprisingly, as the Russian composer, pianist, and pedagogue was Kabalevsky’s primary teacher. Whereas later large-scale orchestral works of Kabalevsky are often terse to the point of musical insolvency, this concerto’s opening movement is leisurely discursive and occasionally complex. Splashy fireworks are abundant, but they don’t interfere with the density of argument. By way of contrast, the second movement is a series of variations that are individually attractive—with plenty of direct references, too, to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Rimsky-Korsakov—if too short to make much of a lasting impression. Rather than the usual, unreservedly cheerful finale, the third movement hearkens back to somber first movement material, without any optimistic resolution.