David Curtis reviews

Peter Donohoe enters a crowded field when it comes to fine recordings of Shostakovich’s piano concertos. Among recent releases, Alexander Melnikov (Harmonia Mundi) and Boris Giltburg (Naxos) are particularly adept at projecting the music’s troubling emotional ambiguity, which in the First Concerto seems to veer between manic high-jinks in the fast movements and suffocating loneliness in the Lento. In comparison, Donohoe is less histrionic, presenting a sober, almost neo-classical account of the work, delivered with crystal-clear articulation.