Last April I gave a marginally qualified welcome to Mischa Maisky’s coupling of these two masterpieces, deeming it “the prime recommendation of the two concertos coupled together”, and although Truls Mork and Mariss Jansons offer admirably strong, well-considered interpretations of both works, that earlier ‘prime recommendation’ still stands. The present release has the virtue of exceptional engineering; in fact, it’s one of the best recordings to emerge from Abbey Road in recent years – a spacious, highly attentive production (Andrew Keener heads the team) with a pin-sharp solo image and a consistently vivid orchestral backdrop.
In that respect alone, Virgin score a definite point over their excellent DG rival. As to interpretation, Mork is a less outwardly demonstrative player than Maisky and Jansons a rather less imaginative Shostakovich conductor than Michael Tilson Thomas. Comparing the two recordings in, say, the finale of the First Concerto and the scherzo of the Second suggests more humour and irony on the part of Maisky and Tilson Thomas, whereas Mork scores with his inwardly expressive accounts of both cadenzas. Jansons’s relative reserve pays high dividends in the Largo of the Second Concerto but is less effective in the finale, where whooping horns and a circus-style drum-roll announce a terrifying call to arms. Tilson Thomas rises to the music’s sinister implications (being mindful perhaps of the composer’s profoundly equivocal relationship to his homeland), whereas Jansons seems more on his guard.
Thinking long-term, I could well imagine inclining towards the new issue’s subtler virtues (using it as a sober option, so to speak), but for those who have as yet to discover this magnificent music – and who do not care to brave the compromised sound quality of the various Rostropovich recordings on Russian Disc – I’d suggest Maisky and Tilson Thomas as a first choice, Schiff and Maxim Shostakovich a second and this superbly recorded production, a third.'