«La grande scuola russa ha un approccio emozionale alla musica. Per noi è importante commuovere chi ci ascolta nella maniera più naturale. Oggi viviamo in un' era altamente tecnologizzata, la precisione è tutto, la sensibilità è altra dai tempi di Vladimir Horowitz, la cui sorella, Regina,è stata insegnante del mio maestro. Quel che cerco di fare io è trovare nuovi elementi che possano attualizzare l' approccio di quell' importante tradizione».

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[...] I was particularly taken with the wonderfully sweet and sensitively nuanced playing of violinist Rachel Barton-Pine, the nobility and warmth of Wen-Sinn Yang's cello and above all the extraordinarily rich sound from pianist Alexander Romanovsky.

Erik Levi

While there have been single discs of Glazunov concertos before no one has offered an edition of the complete concertos. The rather uneven Naxos set using Russian forces included them all but dotted around various CDs mixed in with other orchestral pieces. There five true concertos. With one exception – Piano concerto 1 – these are all shorter than 21 minutes. Add to this three genre miniatures. [...] The Second Piano Concerto is a work written in 1917, a decade after the last complete symphony (No. 8) though you can hear something of that symphony mixed with oriental spices in the finale. With its heart’s-ease opening theme this is a work that combines scirrocos of Tchaikovskian drama with the decorative delights of the Saint-Saens concertos. The longest work here, at just over half an hour, is the First Piano Concerto. Its dancing delicacy is fully displayed at 5:34 in the first movement but there is more grandstanding blazon later on and a strong infusion of stormy Rachmaninov. If you love the Arensky and Scriabin concertos you must hear this and the Second Concerto. Time and again these recordings satisfy with their technical qualities – the saw-toothed bite of the brass is just one example on display in the finale of the First Concerto. Alexander Romanovsky has the necessary tempestuous command for the piano concertos as well as reserves of quiet tenderness and a way of spinning filigree to connote fruity substance. [...] This goes straight to the top of the recommended versions of the concertos. I cannot imagine it being surpassed, so strong and sympathetic are these performances and recordings.

Rob Barnett

[...] The kinship between Glazunov’s two piano concertos with the spirit of Rachmaninov seems fairly plain, although the B Major projects a Slavic impulse that bows at once to Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Chopin. Soloist Alexander Romanovsky keeps the glittery plastic effusiveness of the keyboard part in the forefront, the piano’s adding more color than content. The writing has more in common with the dreamy harp sections of Tchaikovsky ballets than the thunderous drama of that composer’s concertos. The Andante does provide a tender song. The last movement shares a melodic shape with the equivalent movement in Edward MacDowell’s D Minor Concerto, for my money. The 1911 Concerto No. 1 in F Minor takes its structure from the Tchaikovsky Trio in A Minor, whose own second movement is a theme and variations in the form of character pieces. Its first movement theme more than resembles the third movement from Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony. The lighter scoring of some episodes resembles a cross between Liszt and Litolff.[...]

Gary Lemco