Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Look no further for the events marking the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death. As Gewandhauskapellmeister in Leipzig and music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons is conducting nothing less than a one-man Shostakovich marathon, live in Leipzig and in recordings from Boston.Built up over a decade, his Shostakovich recording project with the Boston Symphony Orchestra includes, among much else, the complete symphonies and concertos. Yuja Wang is the soloist in the two piano concertos and these recordings are now available separately from the main compendium, coupled with a selection of the solo Preludes and Fugues.Compared to the cello concertos, the concertos for piano are lighter fare, less intent on probing unfathomable depths. As a teenager in the 1920s, Shostakovich had a job accompanying silent films on the piano and this may account for the harum-scarum episodes in his concertos, both of which he played himself.In Yuja Wang’s hands the music comes across as delightfully playful, quick to register variety. Hardly any extended passage passes by without her lighting upon quicksilver changes of colour and accent. Some other pianists — Leonard Bernstein, for one, conducting from the piano in the second concerto — drive ahead more resolutely, where Wang continues to smile. Nelsons, getting fine playing from his orchestra, is not quite on the same page. His inclination, one senses, is for a slower, deeply resonant kind of performance, but he supports his soloist whenever it matters.The solo pieces, Wang’s first studio recordings in some years, include the Preludes and Fugues in A Minor, Op 87 No. 2, and in D Flat Major, Op 87 No 15, each a model of sparkling clarity.★★★★☆‘Shostakovich: Piano Concertos’ is released by DG
