I suppose I asked for it. These performances have all the accent and colour, all the shape and dramatic flair I found missing from those of Shelley and McNamara on Hyperion. And I am the first to welcome any of Martha Argerich's too rare visits to the studio—I have only given up lobbying for her Rachmaninov Third Concerto because she is obviously so determined not to do it.
There's more good news as well. Teldec have come up with an absolutely superb recording. It's bright and close, close enough to pick up rather too much fingernail clicking, and certainly not likely to appeal to those with any allergy to the 'clang' of the modern piano. But that means that the full range of touch and shading is captured, and the acoustic has just the right degree of atmosphere—altogether a greatly superior sound to that supplied by Harmonia Mundi for Engerer and Maisenberg, and without the latter's obtrusive edits.
Well, if temperament and pianism were all, this would be a winner. But there is also the music. Rachmaninov took the trouble to print the poems which inspired the Op. 5 Suite at the head of each of its four movements. One could be forgiven for wondering if Argerich and Rabinovitch have read them. Their choppy, over-inflected appassionato in the opening ''Barcarolle'' is difficult to reconcile either with the title or with Lermontov's ''O cool evening wave/lap gently under the oars of the gondola''; and this is typical of their self-conscious, not to say contorted shaping, which saps the music of its grandeur, sweep and fatalistic stoicism. 'Gilding the lily' it used to be called; more prosaically, it's a case of musical gestures being highlighted at the expense of harmony and structure, of maximum excitement from second to second and boredom from minute to minute.
Neither the Second Suite nor the Symphonic Dances are quite so shamelessly hammed up, and there is something undeniably impressive in this clamorous intensity. But there is also an element of damaging competitiveness in the playing, which might be forgiven coming from aspiring young performers but not from established artists. For a truer emotional perspective on this music, embracing nostalgia and strength of character as well as outright passion, Engerer and Maisenberg are greatly to be preferred in the Dances; and in the Suite Argerich's previous recording with Nelson Freire (on Philips, coupled with a wonderful Ravel La valse—nla), had all the excitement and virtually none of the self-consciousness of this pianistically superb but musically limited newcomer.'