• c1300-c2000 (Nonesuch), the American pianist Jeremy Denk’s latest release, is just that: 700 years of western classical music encapsulated in 25 short tracks on two CDs. The first disc opens with Machaut, Binchois and Ockeghem – vocal works beguilingly transcribed for keyboard by Denk – moving through to Monteverdi, Purcell and Bach. Denk’s preoccupation is with the development of counterpoint, “music’s superpower”, as he describes it in his own liner notes (Denk is a lucid writer on music; see his many articles in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the Guardian). Disc 2, on more familiar pianistic terrain, spans Beethoven and Mozart to Stockhausen, Ligeti and Glass. Full of contrast and surprise, this is a richly personal gallery of sound.
• Two composers not featured by Denk (observation, not outrage) are Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) and his younger contemporary, the Georgian Sulkhan Tsintsadze (1925-91). The outstanding young German cellist Maximilian Hornung presents them side by side on Cello Concertos of 1966 (Myrios): two concertos both premiered that year, here given exhilarating, poetic performances with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Andris Poga. The novelty is Tsintsadze’s Cello Concerto No 2 in Five Episodes, an ardent, unusually structured work well worth investigating. With liner notes by Russia expert Elizabeth Wilson, who as a student of Rostropovich attended his premiere performance of Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto, this is a disc to own.
• Can music help someone in a troubled mental state? Writer and composer Stephen Johnson has addressed this perennial question in an excellent recent book, How Shostakovich Changed My Mind, based on his 2011 Radio 3 documentary Shostakovich: A Journey Into Light, still available on BBC Sounds. Never mind if you think Shostakovich is not for you. Obligatory listening.
