Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos No. 2 & No. 3

by Horacio Gutierrez / Lorin Maazel

If you're looking for really good Rachmaninoff in top-of-the-line digital sound, then this is the recording of choice. It's curious that these often-recorded works are so difficult to bring off on record. There are many options, but the great versions have been around for decades. These performances challenge the past triumphantly, being neither too self-indulgently slow, nor merely empty virtuosity. Rachmaninoff's concertos are more like symphonies with piano solos--the piano accompanies the orchestra as much as the other way around, and great performances understand the need for an unprecedented degree of cooperation between soloist and conductor. It's a lesson that Lorin Maazel and Horacio Gutierrez have certainly learned, as you can hear for yourself. --David Hurwitz