Evgeny Kissin - Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No.3 (1993)

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Evgeny Kissin - Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No.3 (1993)

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This is a phenomenal recording of this immensely popular concerto. It has been played to the point of exhaustion with every virtuoso using it to showcase their skills, which makes it extremely difficult to say something new.

Kissin definitely grabs your attention from the first theme, taken at a slower tempo than usual, however, unlike some other artists he manages to keep your attention all the way through. He creates such immense drama and scale (this concerto has never sounded so huge as it did in this recording). The final moments of the concerto are nothing short of breathtaking and the deafening applause thereafter is token to that fact.
If there is one gripe I have with this recording it is that the piano seems to overpower the orchestra a lot. There were times when the orchestra should be carrying the piano with a huge fortissimo sound and they seem to be locked in the back room, this is especially prevalent in the first movement. Then somehow in the third movement the orchestra seem to be exactly were they need to be and the sound is fantastic. I'm not sure if Ozawa was deliberately keeping the BSO at bay so as to let the piano take center stage but in a huge romantic concerto the orchestra needs more bravura.