As sound per se, Schiff's 1983 LP recording of these two concertos is surely the best currently available by far. The new CD version is even better, somehow seeming to give the performance a little more body. What it cannot do is give Schiff's rhythm the stability it initially lacks, and not only in quick tempo. In his nervous excitability he takes time to settle into a regular pulse. Nor, in slow tempo, is his line so smooth and shapely as it could be (and, incidentally, Dutoit's opening of the Second Concerto's Adagio is questionably fast). Otherwise both works emerge delightfully mercurial and fresh. Schiff's finger-work is almost as scintillating as Murray Perahias's (CBS), but with many an imaginative spotlighting of inner or bass parts often overlooked. As the only CD version now on the market, it will give collectors much pleasure—or at any rate, until that dedicated Mendelssohnian, Perahia, makes a new bid, as I so very much hope he soon may. The 1975 CBS engineering never did justice to his two supremely stylish LP performances.'