Philadelphia Orchestra records a masterful, troubled Rachmaninoff

So the Rachmaninoff concerto recordings continue with the Philadelphia Orchestra after all.

With the wildfire acclaim for the orchestra's collaboration with pianist Daniil Trifonov in Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (just released on Deutsche Grammophon), a follow-up this week with the same forces and same composer's Piano Concerto No. 4 seemed planned, with four concerts to record Thursday through Sunday at the Kimmel Center.

When questioned, the recording company was vague. Then on Thursday before the performance, music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin asked the audience to be extra quiet for the sake of the ever-sensitive microphones. By the end of the performance, DG had another winner - as much as this troubled, oft-revised concerto can ever be.

The piece is lean, modern Rachmaninoff. Melodies feel half-formed and without the usual bedrock of tiny motifs from which everything else grows. Loveliness is often there, and Trifonov shaped ideas with a meaning and purpose that other pianists do not, exercising his genius for uniting opposites. Certain passages were heroic yet personal, airy yet explosive, with such apparent contradictions all of a piece in his hands, with prismlike tone quality devoid of stereotypical burly Russian timbres.

Even Nézet-Séguin's talent for building long musical paragraphs can't disguise the piece's fitfulness, as though several different works were cut and pasted together. Considering what a Rachmaninoff town this is, the public is owed more hearings of the original manuscript version. The composer did get it right the first time.

Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade was back yet again, but with renewed interpretive vitality. If the piece is merely pretty, the performance has failed - with its story of a woman deferring her death by spinning fantastical tales for the entertainment of a sultan. Nézet-Séguin delivered appropriately dire moments (you could feel the sultan's scowl), but maintained seamlessness amid radical orchestration shifts, giving the impression of musical granite abruptly changing color.

The second movement, which contains all that's best about the piece, became so eventful it was a saga unto itself. And, as with performances by Leopold Stokowski, many moments had alluring hesitation, as though Scheherazade is making up stories as she goes along and isn't quite sure what to say next. But the performances were made by the rhetorical intensity of the incidental solos, especially from bassoonist Daniel Matsukawa.

dstearns@phillynews.com.

The program will be repeated Saturday and Sunday at the Kimmel Center. Information: 215-893-1999 or www.philorch.org.