Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov’s 2011 recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues was named by the BBC Music Magazine as one of the 50 Greatest Recordings of All Time, so it would be hard to find a better soloist for that composer’s dazzling Piano Concerto No. 1, performed in Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s 2024 season.

Alexander Melnikov. Photo © Sasha Malnikov

The concert also marked the SSO debut of Italian-born Danish conductor Giordano Bellincampi, Music Director of the Auckland Philharmonia, with the second half featuring two of Richard Strauss’s most popular tone poems, Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.

To set the scene, Bellincampi chose Shostakovich’s madcap, Rossini-like Festive Overture, the perfect orchestral warm-up for a busy night ahead with Francesco Celata’s clarinet and Josh Batty’s flute running hot in the opening moments after the blazing fanfare from the trumpets.

Missing from their line-up was Principal Trumpet David Elton, but that was only because he was partnering Melnikov in the concerto which Shostakovich originally conceived as a work for trumpet. In the end, the piano won out and the result, with its quotations from Haydn and Beethoven’s Appassionata piano sonata,...