Joel Hill writes:

>The Musicweb site does NOT say "the best Third Concerto I've ever
>heard"!!  I checked out their site to see who thought the third was
>that good.  Any comments?

Well, the MusicWeb reviewer states "I can recommend this as at least as
fine a performance as I've ever heard." That's not exactly the same
words, but pretty close, right?

I am not yet familiar with Scherbakov's recording of Rachmaninov's 2nd
and 3rd Piano Concertos.  However, other recordings he has made of Russian
piano music would lead me to assume that his interpretations are worthy
or better.  If the recording would be at all problematic, the likely
source would be the conductor Dmitri Yablonsky who is defintely not in
the top rank of conductors of the Russian repertoire; Yablonsky tends
to be rather dour and lacking in youthful spark.

While we're on Scherbakov, I recently reviewed on these pages his disc
of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas.  My conclusions were not favorable,
although the one review of this disc on MusicWeb certainly is in the
"get it" category.  On the other hand, the MusicWeb Reviewers Log prepared
by Patrick Waller in January 2005 appears to agree with my assessment
that Scherbakov is not a good match for Scarlatti.  At any rate, my
review of the Scarlatti disc will soon be on the MusicWeb site.

What all the above clearly shows is that there are always different
opinions of the same performances and recordings.  My view is that anyone
wanting to get a taste of Scherbakov should begin with his recordings
of Russian music.  As for me, I'll soon be reviewing Scherbakov's Naxos
disc of Shostakovich solo piano music as part of my extended review of
Shostakovich piano recordings.  I can tell you right now that he's much
better in Shostakovich than in Scarlatti.

Don Satz
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