Maurizio Pollini’s two previous recordings of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, both conducted by Abbado, are the stuff of legend – the 1995 live recording in particular often being regarded as simply the greatest ever made of this strangely-structured but ultimately deeply revealing insight into the composer’s complex psychology. 

So why record it yet again? Well, because Pollini’s towering musical genius (and yes, that description is offered by way of sober assessment) just grows and grows with time. Indeed, nearly 20 years is too long to wait for this, his latest State-of-the-Musical-Union address on what makes this four-movement work in B Flat such a compelling experience, even when it doesn’t quite have the bravura or colour-and-movement of its D Minor predecessor.

And again, Pollini, now in his 70s, delivers with everything we’ve come to expect from him – the poetry most of all, especially as the piano enters after the famous cello melody at the start of the slow movement. Then there’s the humanity of it – you can tell just from the sound that there is a great, compassionate spirit animating it. And of course, for all the magnificence of Pollini’s playing, it still sounds simply like a direct line to the heart of what Brahms himself was on about.

If anything, it’s even more impassioned than its predecessors, with Thielemann driving hard in the big orchestral moments. But then in the Finale there’s the trademark Pollini playfulness too that has made him such an awesome interpreter of Mozart. Here it’s as if he’s created the Brahmsian universe in the turbulent first three movements, and on this, the fourth day of rest, he’s happy to frolic within his creation.

So is it his best Brahms 2 yet? Quite possibly, but ranking musicianship of this stature, that endures decade-in, decade-out, seems somehow impertinent.

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