Piano Concerto In a Minor

Konstantin Scherbakov (piano), Ivan Tvrdik (cello) & Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Howard Griffiths

Respighi:
 Piano Concerto in A minor
 Fantasia slava for Piano and Orchestra
 Toccata for Piano and Orchestra

"All these pieces are otherwise available in decent performances, but at this price how could anyone with the slightest weakness for Respighi hesitate? Scherbakov and Griffiths do a good deal more than dutifully go through the motions, the soloist in particular playing with delicacy and affection, grateful for the opportunities to demonstrate how well he would play Liszt or Rachmaninov, but in the Toccata he's interested as well in Respighi's more characteristic modal vein; as a Russian, he demonstrates that this too, like so much in Respighi, was influenced by the time he spent in Russia.
Russian soloist, English conductor and Slovak orchestra all enjoy the moment in the Fantasiaslava where Respighi presents a morsel of Smetana in the evident belief that it's a Russian folk-dance, but the Concerto and the Fantasia, both very early works, aren't patronised in the slightest.
The Toccata isn't so much an exercise in the neo-Baroque, often though its dotted and florid figures promise it, more of an essay on how far one can be neo-Baroque without giving up a post-Lisztian keyboard style and comfortable orchestral upholstery. But in a slow and florid central section, a rather melancholy aria that passes from the soloist to the oboe, to the strings and back again, there's a real quality of Bachian utterance translated not unrecognisably into a late Romantic language. Scherbakov sounds touched by it, and obviously wants us to like it.
The recordings are more than serviceable, but each work is given only a single track."
Gramophone Classical Music Guide - 2010