The Schumann Piano Concerto and Dvorak Eighth Symphony might seem an odd coupling on disc, but they make a rather nice mini-concert for home listening. Two things immediately stand out: 4Tay’s resplendent engineering, and some truly fantastic orchestral playing from the Moscow Philharmonic. Time and again throughout the Schumann, one is struck by imaginatively woven first-desk solos (the plaintive oboe in the first movement, for example), warm, responsive string chording, and firmly sprung rhythms that prevent the outer movements from lapsing into sing-song regularity. I’m less enamored with Gerald Robbins’ sensitive but slightly stiff traversal of the solo part, which lacks the drama, fluidity, and abandon pianists as disparate as Argerich, Arrau, Serkin, and Perahia have brought to this music. Still, Robbins has his moments. He makes beautiful, disembodied sounds with the soft chords leading into the finale, where his deliberate tempo allows Schumann’s perpetual motion passages to breathe and interact with their surroundings. The prize of the disc, however, is a honey of a Dvorak Eighth. Kenneth Klein brings uplifting rhythmic spring and lyric eloquence to everything he touches here, with perfectly judged tempo relationships, and incisive string articulation to match. Confirmed audiophiles are advised to snap up this disc.
