Although these recordings are already available on RCA's magnificent, and now Gramophone Award-winning, ten-CD salute to the composer (3/93), it is good to have Rachmaninov's two most popular works for piano and orchestra and the Vocalise (a haunting and unforgettable encore) as a separate programme. The recordings, dating from 1929 to 1934, have come up exceptionally well and allow us, once again, to marvel at a pianist beyond price. How different is Rachmaninov's sparkle and sense of repartee in the early pages of the Rhapsody to his celebrated dour image (his ''six foot two of Russian gloom''). The pianistic intricacy of Var. No. 15 is spun off with a fabulous agility and time and again Rachmaninov's dancing lightness and rhythmic vivacity keep everyone on the qui vive. How typical is the flick given to the principal phrase of Var. No. 18 (a touch of wryness rather than an oasis of sentimentality), and his dazzling flight through the treacherous 'violinistic' skips of Var. No. 24 hardly suggests that he took Moiseiwitsch's mischievous advice to drink a glass of Benedictine before playing the Rhapsody!
The Second Concerto, too, is so much less lugubrious than from others. Even the central Adagio is firmly as well as affectionately propelled its central double-note trill at the climax cut off with an almost contemptuous brevity. In other words, Rachmaninov's improvisatory genius colours every bar, a quality later erased by splicing and editing, takes and re-takes: the modern world of recording techniques with its subsequent sense of reduction, inhibition and playing for safety. Finally, the Vocalise, arranged for orchestra and conducted by the composer. The swooning portamentos may sound alien but the sheer momentum, the natural flow of the melody from phrase to phrase, from arch to arch, is pure Rachmaninov.'