This is a passion project for Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who has wanted to record Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto for more than two decades. The only question is why he didn’t get round to it sooner. Written in 1936 but little-known now, the concerto is a giant, Technicolor work that’s a great fit both for Thibaudet’s flamboyant yet precise playing style and for the LA Philharmonic and their conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Khachaturian, born in Georgia into an Armenian family, was a composer with one foot in Soviet Russia and one in the Caucasus, and that comes through in music that’s a distinctive, inseparable mixture of Russian popular Romanticism with eastern modes and harmonies. The middle movement, incidentally, includes a rare outing for the musical saw, which here hovers eerily above the big tune as if someone were whistling along in the recording studio.
Thibaudet fills the rest of the disc with solo pieces, starting with the eminently recognisable love theme from Spartacus (in Thibaudet’s own skilful transcription) and the Sabre Dance from Gayane, his other hit ballet. Then, offering calm after the concerto’s storm, there are six miniatures from his Pictures from Childhood and the suite of incidental music he wrote for Lermontov’s play Masquerade, the work of a true theatre composer.
