Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major

Back in 1992, when this recording was produced, Hélène Grimaud was only 22 years old and in the early stages of her career as a concert pianist. And it's that audacious youthful energy and impetuous confidence that make these highly charged accounts noteworthy. Sure, since then she's performed these two concertos many times and has also released more recent recordings with reputable conductors, but the volatile, nervous energy within this one remains unmatched. The highly impassioned passages within the Rachmaninov get all the emotive impetus they deserve, and the zany, manic outbursts that abound in the final movement of the Ravel are really bold and cheeky. And in my opinion, no one else has ever surpassed Hélène Grimaud's correct tempo and perfectly nuanced account of the mesmerizingly beautiful Adagio assai movement of Ravel's Concerto in G.

So if you passed on this Denon release back then because Grimaud's reputation as a top-tier pianist had not yet been established, now with MDG's distribution and production partnership with Denon, you can make up for your past transgressions. Like everything else in this crazy world we live in, new is not always better!