Here is music-making to wonder at. Rarely in their history can the two concertos have been performed with such meticulous care and affection. The Luxembourg-born, 25-year-old pianist includes Pletnev – his more-thandistinguished partner on this disc – among his teachers and has won first prize in one of the less celebrated competitions (so often venues of true musical discovery).
What sadness and introspection he conveys beneath Ravel's clowning surface, shadowed, as it were, by the Left Hand Concerto, by an inwardness mirrored in his own haunting ThreeImprovisations. The central Adagio emerges as a timeless reverie, making it hard to recall a performance of greater magic or tonal translucency, a far cry indeed from a more superficial tradition emanating from Marguerite Long, the work's dedicatee. In the Prokofiev Schlimé and Pletnev take an almost chamber music-like view of the grotesquerie and acrobatics and the result is lyrical and musicianly in a wholly fresh and unsuspected way. Nothing sounds bleak or conventionally percussive and a mysterious, winterfairytale aura hangs over the entire work (never more so than in the Larghetto).
Schlimé confesses that he has always felt impelled to play what he calls his 'other' music, in this case improvised reflections on the two concertos. Recorded late one night in the Moscow Conservatoire, they were added with Pletnev's blessing, and the concluding mournful, jazzman's chime is very much music that registers 'long after it was heard no more'.
Pentatone's sound and balance are exemplary.

Here is music-making to wonder at. Rarely can the two concertos have been performed with such meticulous care and affection. The Luxembourg-born, 25-year-old pianist includes Pletnev among his teachers. What sadness and introspection he conveys beneath Ravel's clowning surface... The central Adagio emerges as a timeless reverie, making it hard to recall a performance of greater magic or tonal translucency... In the Prokofiev, Schlimé and Pletnev take an almost chamber music-like view of the grotesquerie and acrobatics, and the result is lyrical and musicianly in a wholly fresh and unsuspected way. ...Schlimé's... improvised reflections on the two concertos... were added with Pletnev's blessing, and the concluding mournful, jazzman's chime is very much music that registers 'long after it was heard no more'.