With this disc John Lill and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Tadaaki Otaka conclude their Rachmaninov concerto cycle for Nimbus (Lill will complete the solo works in due course). Once again I can celebrate Nimbus’s balance and good sound quality – a far cry from their earliest efforts – Otaka’s eloquence (try the start of the Second Concerto’s Adagio sostenuto) and John Lill’s honest-to-goodness freedom from all excitable virtuoso flummery or neurosis. Never for a second do you hear a melody at the expense of darkly swirling left-hand accompaniments; everything is articulated with sterling clarity and good sense. Yet such candour has its dangers, particularly when Rachmaninov’s winged lyricism is impeded by such literalness. Like Van Cliburn, in his recording of the Second Concerto, Lill opts for broad tempos, but whereas Cliburn “loads every rift with ore”, Lill sounds damagingly inhibited, his playing for safety a far cry from heroic or romantic freedom. There is not a trace of glamour (false or otherwise) and it has to be said that he hardly wears his years lightly. He is cruelly foxed by the finale’s principal theme where his once armour-plated technique seriously falters.
The First Concerto’s opening octaves sound tired after, say, Earl Wild or Zoltan Kocsis and, throughout, there is too little sense of texture or finesse with a notably stolid climb through the Andante’s final starry ascent. In other words, playing which somehow suggests that respectability is the highest virtue does little for Rachmaninov or, indeed, for any composer worth his salt. These performances are strictly for those who like their Rachmaninov stone cold sober. For fire and ice and aplomb of another order readers should turn to the above mentioned pianists, to Ashkenazy (with either Previn or Haitink) and, of course, to the composer himself.'