Medtner & Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos

First things first: Hamelin is slowly becoming human. The sort of jaw-dropping pyrotechnics that you'll hear in his Godowsky or Alkan recordings have faded over the years. I had heard live recordings of both these concertos from him before, and the fire from those performances is unfortunately absent here. With his legendary technique aging, however, a superb musicality has grown to take its place. He gives here two worthy performances of two of the greatest piano concerti in the repertoire. Most people will not be familiar with Medtner 2nd concerto, so let me say, it's a doozy. A brilliantly constructed masterwork that will continue to get better and better upon relisten. It's been noted time after time, but Medtner had a peculiar way of creating music that is almost never striking on the first few listens, but manages to reveal its majesty to you the more attempts you give it. The 2nd concerto is possibly his greatest work, and Hamelin gives it the care it deserves. His Rach 3 is unfortunately one among thousands. I've heard so many recordings of this work, it takes a lot to stand out after a while. Don't let that dissuade you, however. He wrings the beauty from each note and it's well past time that a Hamelin performance of this piece make it to disc. Perhaps it's just me, but there seems to be something missing from the sound quality of this recording. I have become accustomed to Hyperion recordings of Hamelin sounding almost like it's not being played by a human at all (in a good way!), as if the music had always simply existed in that form, and was not actually a human reproducing notes on a page. There's something strangely rough about this recording. It feels up close and personal, and there's certainly something to admire about that. At the same time, a nostalgia for the classic days of Hyperion/Hamelin recordings is creeping in for me and biasing my hearing of this disc. This is the kind of recording I'd been hoping Hamelin would make for quite a while now, and I'm happy to say that it doesn't disappoint!