Rachmaninoff: Piano concertos Nos. 2 & 4

The Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova writes movingly in her notes to this album about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 affected the country’s musicians. These emotions are reflected in her deeply felt performance of the slow movement in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4, music of exile composed in America. Piano Concerto No. 2 is the coupling and a Fedorova speciality. Her interpretation moves through the murky ruminations of the opening movement to spectacular catharsis in a brilliantly played account of the finale. Fedorova’s immersion in Rachmaninoff’s sumptuous late-Romantic idiom suffuses every moment of these triumphant, spirited performances.