Two years ago, there was a real buzz around Auckland Town Hall when Eldar Nebolsin and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra played Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto.
As if the performance itself didn't generate a surfeit of goosebumps and palpitations, it came with an extra bonus; many in the hall knew that, within days, orchestra, pianist and American conductor Michael Stern, would be recording this work for Naxos, together with the composer's lesser-known Concert Fantasia.
Now, those sessions of superb music-making can be enjoyed on CD, the sumptuous sound of which reminds one of just how well the concerto fitted within the orchestra's Opulence series back in 2014.
All the many virtues of that live concert have not dimmed. The Uzbek soloist, no mere flash-on-the-keys technician, provides solid architectural underlay for the first movement's four-and-a-half minute cadenza; in the following Andante, he joins violinist Vesa-Matti Leppanen and cellist Andrew Joyce for some exquisitely intimate chamber music.
If length were all, the 30 minutes of Tchaikovsky's Concert Fantasia would guarantee the score full concerto status.
