Shostakovich: The Piano Concertos & Solo Works

Stilettos on a Typewriter

Few pianists alive possess Yuja Wang’s ability to make the modern grand piano feel like a Ferrari roaring through a rain-slicked metropolis.

Recorded live at Boston’s Symphony Hall under the seasoned baton of Andris Nelsons, this Deutsche Grammophon release—nominated for Concerto of the Year at the 2026 Gramophone Awards—brings together both of Dmitri Shostakovich’s piano concertos alongside selected solo preludes and fugues.

The First Concerto opens like a burst of cinematic slapstick: the solo trumpet sneers, while the piano’s percussive staccatos rattle like an old Underwood typewriter on overdrive. This is the young Shostakovich of 1933—before the shadow of Stalin’s purges fell across his desk—intoxicated by silent cinema, burlesque, and Charlie Chaplin.

Wang’s fingers ignite sparks across the eighty-eight keys. She isn’t just playing classical music; she is sticking her tongue out at solemn academic convention.

Concerto No. 2: A Father’s Morning Light

The emotional epiphany of the album arrives in the slow movement of the Second Concerto.

Written for his son Maxim’s nineteenth birthday, the Andante casts aside all armor. When the Boston strings unfurl a warm, flowing carpet of sound, Wang strips away all bravura. Her tone turns pearlescent and heartbreakingly tender, falling like dawn light filtering through linen curtains onto a child’s pillow.

Having survived decades of totalitarian surveillance, terror, and grief, Shostakovich poured his purest, most undefended fatherly love into this brief movement. Wang plays it with breathless fragility.

Thumbed Noses at the Gallows

In the bounding gallop of the finale, the rascal returns. Scales tumble and vault across the keyboard, leaving the entire Boston Symphony scurrying to catch her dust.

Life may be an absurd, terrifying circus; but so long as you can mock the darkness with an impish grin, no tyrant can ever truly claim your soul.