Emil Gilels (1916-85) was a true king of pianists and these Paris and New York based recordings (dating from 1954-6) can only strengthen and confirm his legendary status. Here, once more, is that superlative musicianship, that magisterial technique and, above all, that unforgettable sonority; rich and sumptuous at every level. What breadth and distinction he brings to the first movement of the Saint-Saens, from his fulmination in the central octave uproar to his uncanny stillness in the final pages. High jinks are reserved for the second and third movements, the former tossed off with a teasing lightness, the latter's whirling measures with infinite brio. An approximate swipe at the Scherzo's flashing double-note flourish (2'36''), a false entry (3'17'') and a wrong turning at 5'22'' in the finale offer amusing evidence of Gilels's high-wire act; this performance was, after all, recorded before today's obsession with a gleaming and artificial perfection. No performance of this concerto (the one that goes from Bach to Offenbach) is more 'live', and it is small wonder that Claudio Arrau included it among his desert island favourites.
Gilels's Rachmaninov is altogether more temperate yet, once more, this is among the few truly great performances of this work. His tempo is cool and rapid, and maintained with scintillating ease through even the most formidable intricacy. Listen to the way he eases rather than accelerates at the tempo precedente, ma un poco piu mosso at 5'46'' and you may well feel that no other pianist (including Rachmaninov himself) has ever played this passage with such haunting individuality. The cadenza—the finer and more transparent of the two—billows and recedes in superbly musical style and the climax is of awe-inspiring grandeur. The central scherzando in the finale is as luminous as it is vivacious and, clearly, I could go on for ever marvelling at this or that insight, or Gilels's nonchalant pianistic mastery. The finale's meno mosso variation is excluded (a beautiful passage that Gilels would doubtless have reinstated in our more generous and enlightened times) and I have to add that Cluytens's partnership is distant and run of the mill. But the recordings hardly show their age in such admirably smooth transfers. Gilels's 'encore', Shostakovich's piquant Prelude and Fugue No. 5 in D shines like a brilliant shaft of light after the Rachmaninov. The performance is, again, perfection, entirely justifying Artur Rubinstein's comment after hearing Gilels play in Russia: ''If that boy comes to the West, I shall have to shut up shop''.'