Kirill Gerstein's Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 Recording Nominated for 2016 BBC Music Magazine Award

Pianist Kirill Gerstein's world premiere recording of the 1879 version of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, performed with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and conducted by James Gaffigan, has been nominated for a 2016 BBC Music Magazine Award in the Concerto category.

Voting for the award recipients is now open to the public at awards.classical-music.com through February 19 and winners will be announced during the 2016 BBC Music Magazine Awards Ceremony to be held in London on April 5.

The nominated recordings were selected by jury of critics and magazine editorial staff from the more than 1,200 recordings reviewed in BBC Magazine this past year. The complete list of nominees can be viewed here.

Mr. Gerstein's recording, released in the U.S. in March 2015 by myrios classics, has already received an ECHO Klassik Award in the in the category "Concerto Recording of the Year."

For the recording, Mr. Gerstein was granted special access from the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin (Moscow) to new score material based on the latest musicological research and Tchaikovsky's own conducting score from his last public concert. A new critical Urtext edition of the score was published by the Tchaikovsky Museum in 2015 in association with the 175th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 exists in three versions. Despite negative criticism from pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky had the first version of the concerto published in 1875. The second and final version made by Tchaikovsky himself, which has been recorded here, incorporated small practical adjustments to the piano part. It was published in 1879 and used by him in subsequent performances including on tour during his only visit to America in 1891 with concerts in New York for the opening of Carnegie Hall, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC; and in 1893 at the last concert he conducted. Tchaikovsky died within days of this performance, and the third version of the Concerto was published a year after his death. According to Mr. Gerstein, it "contains a number of editorial changes that differ from the text of Tchaikovsky's own score, were not authorized by him and made posthumously."

Paired with Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 is Prokofiev's second Piano Concerto, which for very different reasons also exists in a revised edition. As Mr. Gerstein explains, "composed in 1913, Prokofiev left the original manuscript of the second concerto in Russia and during one of the cold winters during the tumultuous period of the Russian revolution the score was used by his neighbors for heating the stove. He reconstructed and revised the composition premièring the second version of the concerto in Paris in 1924."

KIRILL GERSTEIN, piano
myrios classics: MYR016

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
James Gaffigan, conductor

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23
1879 version - world premiere recording
1 Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso 20:12
2 Andantino simplice 6:24
3 Allegro con fuoco 7:28

Sergei Sergeyevish Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16
4 Andantino 10:58
5 Scherzo: Vivace 2:37
6 Intermezzo: Allegro modearato 6:48
7 Finale: Allegro tempestoso 10:53