With this fiery version of Schumann’s piano concerto, the discography of the amazing Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund is now fully available digitally! It is coupled with other masterpieces of the concertante repertoire, including Grieg the quite rare Glazunov, and performed with undisputable mastery by genius soloist John Ogdon.
June 8, 2010 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of robert Schumann, one of the most important romantic composers of the 19th century. To celebrate his vast and impressive output, Deutsche Grammophon and Decca have compiled this 35-CD box set of his most important masterworks. Though this is not a complete edition, it includes every major work and a number of rarities covering every aspect of Schumann’s output.
Pianist Jan Lisiecki, just out of his teens when this recording was released, might have been expected to take a safe path with his recording of one of the most popular concertos in the repertory, the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54. He has done anything but. This recording is unusual in several respects. It eschews the almost universal pairing with the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, in favor of a pair of late Schumann works that are rarely performed. But the real news here is the antiheroic and completely counter-to-type Schumann concerto itself. Lisiecki takes as a point of departure a waggish remark by Franz Liszt that the work is a "concerto without piano."
"…The sound is every bit as good as the playing - all players are just "there" and all the highlighting of textures and balance adjustments are obviously not the work of the engineers. Enormously recommended. " ~sa-cd.net