Album: Schumann/ Dvorak, Piano Concertos (Pentatone)

Martin Helmchen delivers a refreshing performance of Schumann and Dvorak's piano concertos.

Both are Cinderella works; the first famously dubbed "a concerto without a soloist" (meaning one in which the soloist is required to listen to his colleagues), the second long deemed "unplayable". Helmchen addresses the problems in the Schumann with close attention to the woodwind of the Orchestra Philharmonique de Strasbourg. If the tumbling motifs of Dvorak's first movement are impulsive, the cadenza and Andante are confidently characterised.