Gramophone Magazine
April 2025
Editor's Choice

Dmitri Maslejev (piano), Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra

Liszt: Totentanz, S126 for piano & orchestra
Franz Liszt, Mikhail Petukhov: Spanish Rhapsody for Piano and String Orchestra (After Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody, S.254)
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
Bach, J S: Keyboard Concerto in D Minor, BWV 974: II. Adagio (After Marcello's Oboe Concerto)

Dmitry Masleev offers a highly personal diptych with the Dies irae theme running throughout. The pianist serves up these formidable pages with racy, sober, elegant playing, and virtuosity giving way to sensuality and crystal-clear lyricism. One one side we have Liszt's Totentanz (which saw him triumph at the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition) and Rhapsodie espagnole (adapted for piano and string orchestra by his mentor Petukhov) on the other is Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (his composer of choice). The album closes with the Adagio from Marcello's Oboe Concerto, arranged for keyboard by Bach, a kind of vision of heaven after hell.

"Overall, his approach may strike some as a degree cooler and more clinical than usual. But the combination of clarity and sensitive interplay with the orchestra makes it anything but routine." - Gramophone Magazine, April 2025