Tchaikovsky & Khachaturian: Piano Concertos – Xiayin Wang

   in Piano International (Sep, 2016)
This arresting coupling recalls the once popular, now neglected, most garish of all piano concertos. For the authors of that august publication, The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music, the Khachaturian Concerto’s gaudy histrionics are nothing if not audacious, ‘with slot machines competing for our attention as high- spirited youths break china at sixpence a go and all kinds of dubious characters lurk in the shadows. In the second movement we have our fortune told by a gypsy, mysterious in yards of voile, complete with tambourine and a dreadful instrument called a flexatone (a kind of swanee whistle). In the third movement we emerge from the stuffy tent to end …
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