Shostakovich: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 + 2 / String Quartet No. 8

At an age when he is still very young, Boris Giltburg has already built a spectacular, picture-perfect career. Since winning both the critics' and audience prizes at the highly prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition, he has been regarded as an heir to timeless musical geniuses such as David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Anna Vinnitskaya and Leon Fleisher. Giltburg's first-rate concert dates announced for 2017 in Germany, including appearances at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, the Schwetzingen Festival and the Cologne Philharmonie, speak for themselves. His most recent NAXOS album even made it into the US pop charts of public radio alliance NPR. Alongside German Romanticism, Giltburg has a particular interest in the Russian repertoire, and NAXOS now presents a recording with every prospect of becoming a benchmark, featuring a team that has received major international recording awards for its recording of Shostakovich's symphonies: the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko. Shostakovich's two piano concertos rank among the finest and most beautiful contributions to the genre in the 20th century. The Second Concerto in particular, which the composer wrote for his son Maxim, remains a firm favorite with audiences. Boris Giltburg also adds a world-premiere recording of his own piano transcription of Shostakovich's world-famous Eighth String Quartet, which is likely to attract considerable attention.