Unlike many other works by Shostakovich, his piano concertos express serenity and joie de vivre, as the composer himself said about his Piano Concerto No. 1: 'I wanted to write good and entertaining music that might even give pleasure to a more discriminating listener'. Paul Gulda, born in 1961 and the pupil of his father, Fritz Pauer, Roland Batik, Leonid Brumberg and Rudolf Serkin, has performed as a pianist since the 1980s and recorded these two piano concertos in 1992/93 with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra under its principal conductor Vladimir Fedoseyev, one of the most distinguished Russian conductors - a CD accompanied by much acclaim on the part of critics and not available for many years. Now Gramola has reissued it.