Piano Concertos

TESTAMENT is an artist-based label, not restricted to any period of recording history, and its issues are selected
from the archives of some of the largest record companies in the world.

Both the Grieg and Schumann Concertos were central to Moiseiwitsch's immense repertoire and, as with so many other Russian pianists, Schumann remained his greatest love. His open-ing to the Schumann Concerto is characteristically understated (like a great actor throwing away his lines), but his projection of the principal theme has a matchless tonal bloom and subtlety. The espressivo at 1'43" is, again, vintage Moiseiwitsch, and how many other pianists have eased their way through the central A flat dreams with such unaffected charm? In the opening of the Intermezzo he is delightfully grazioso, emphasizing the staccatos as much as the manifold feelings and colours, and in the finale his play of light and shade in the many pages of whirling fig-uration are, once Inure, inimitable Moiseiwitsch. The Grieg Concerto, too), sounds newly minted, with markings such as tranquillo e cantabile observed with special affection. The cat-alogue may be filled with more openly confrontational performances but Moiseiwitsch, who took music more by stealth than storm, ele-gantly eclipses the readings of so many more assertive keyboard tigers.
For encores there are classic performances of Palmgren (a composer Moiseiwitsch made pecu-liarly his own) and Schumann. Ackermann's partnership is arguably more able than inspiring, but Testament's transfers of recordings dating from 1941 to 1953 are superb and, throughout, you are reminded of a distant time when feeling could be expressed with a spontaneous, life-enhancing romanticism.

From a review by Bryce Morrison Gramophone, June 2000