Sergei Prokofiev completed his Piano Concerto No. 2 while he was still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatorium. By this time he had already established a reputation as a dazzling virtuoso and precocious composing talent. Similarly, both performers here, Evgeny Kissin and Vladimir Ashkenazy, are Russians who had their pianistic skills recognised at a young age. 

The Concerto No. 2 is unapologetically romantic, much like Rachmaninov’s concertos, but without the all-pervasive melancholy. The first movement is broad and grand in its themes and extremely virtuosic. The second movement (a scherzo) is as technically challenging as any, while the third is one of Prokofiev’s first excursions into the macabre. Full blown romanticism returns in the dazzling fourth movementwith its ecstatic conclusion.

The second concerto is much less indulgent and much more a product of the 20^th century, occupying a similar, sometimes jazz-inspired, sound-world to Ravel’s Concerto in G. Kissin and Ashkenazy are terrific interpreters of these works. Kissin is undaunted by Prokofiev’s extremely demanding piano (his control in the first concerto’s Scherzo is phenomenal) and a more sympathetic partner in Ashkenazy is difficult to imagine. These are live recordings and the frisson this provides adds enormously to the result.

This all-Russian effort, spectacularly captured by EMI’s engineers is a triumph in almost every regard.