Piano Concertos Nos 1, 3 & 5
Bronfman's performance of the popular Third Concerto has an easy songfulness that sits very nicely alongside the many bravura passages, which he dispatches with aplomb. The First Concerto is a zippy little piece that is less than a quarter of an hour long, but is exhaustingly difficult. Prokofiev was himself a stellar pianist, and he wrote these taxing works for his personal use. By the time he came to write the sadly neglected Fifth Concerto, he was at the end of his life (he died on the same day as Stalin), but his melodic inspiration was still potent as ever. Bronfman never loses sight of the melody in the piles of notes, and Zubin Mehta accompanies faithfully. This is the set to own if you want good digital sound.--David Hurwitz