One of the first pianists I loved as a child, and one for whom my admiration has only grown, the supremely elegant Maria João Pires is an artist with no pretense or ego, concerned only with making the music shine as brightly as possible—and her performance of Robert Schumann’s flowing, idiosyncratic Piano Concerto sparkles like a rare diamond. From the plaintive opening chords, she brings out nuances and melodic lines often lost in other recordings, and executes the third movement’s arpeggios with whitewater simplicity (like the recurrent major-minor cascades beginning at 35:45, among my favorite moments in music).
All the while, Pires remains minutely attuned to every movement of the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who also perform two of my favorite Mendelssohn works: the haunting Hebrides Overture and “Scottish” Symphony.
