Rimsky Korsakov: Vol du bourdon

During the last – remarkable – session of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, the second place of Wen Yu Shen, born 1986, expressed the general impression about this young man coming from the piano class of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling in Hannover : competence, maturity, sincerity. So a first CD proved to be the best gift to grant to such an enrapturing young talent. Shen places for us two opposite temperaments side by side : the anti-Romantic Stravinski answers here to the extreme Romantic Rachmaninov. But are these two exiled Russians so far from each other that it looks at first sight ? The magnificent program of this recording gives some insight in the problem, thanks to an interpreter who is able, despite his youth, to go to the core of things with the supreme delicacy of making us think that all this is easy. A discovery, and a confirmation.