Helene Grimaud – Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 (180g LP)

Label: Warner Classics

Helene Grimaud was already a worldwide star in 2001 when this hugely successful album was released – and is still among the top pianists in the world today. This is the first release on LP of one of the best albums of her discography. Grimaud is accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy’s baton.

Save for the Corelli Variations, Hélène Grimaud previously recorded these Rachmaninov works for Denon. Her remake of the Second Concerto largely improves on her 1994 outing with Jesus Lopez-Cobos and the Royal Philharmonic. For starters, Vladimir Ashkenazy fashions a more robust and sophisticated orchestral framework, and he dovetails Grimaud’s free-spirited phrasing in the first two movements like white covers rice. The pianist brings greater assertion and probity to the keyboard writing now, with more liberal tempo fluctuation and exploratory inner voices. The problem is that the piano is way up in the mix, and occupies center stage even when it is supposed to be accompanying other instruments, which is often the case in this score. Sometimes, as at the very opening, it sounds as though pianist and orchestra are playing two different, unrelated pieces simultaneously. Such sameness of texture proves wearying after a while, and so does Grimaud’s rather monochrome sonority. And in the Finale we miss the rhythmic pizzazz and leonine, supple virtuosity that abounds in Richter’s wondrous DG benchmark. – Jed Distler / Classics Today