Rachmaninov: Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, Op. 17

“If the sound is uneven, that's far outweighed by the buzz we get from these scintillating live performances, all of which sound more like one player (with four hands) than two.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2008 *****

“…at a time when new music is more and more marginalised, modernity is expressed through the interpretation of past works by inspired performers. Lugano is a vibrant tribute to the concept.” Financial Times

“Rarely in her extraordinary career has Argerich sounded more exhaustingly restless and quixotic, her mind and fingers flashing with reflexes merely dreamt of by other less phenomenally endowed pianists. Yet her Rachmaninov is full of surprises, her opening Allegro almost convivial until she meets directions such as più vivo or veloce, where the tigress in her shows her claws and the music is made to seethe and boil. The cadenza (the finer and more transparent of the two) rises to the sort of climax that will make all pianists' hearts beat faster and her first entry in the 'Intermezzo' interrupts the orchestra's musing with the impatience of a hurricane. But throughout these pages it's almost as if she's searching for music that will allow her virtuosity its fullest scope. In the finale she finds it, accelerating out of the second movement with a sky-rocketing propulsion.
Here the music races like wildfire, with a death-defying turn of speed at 7'21" and an explosive energy throughout that must have left audience, conductor and orchestra feeling as if hit by some seismic shock-wave.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Phenomenal … transcendental” BBC Music Magazine Top 1000 CDs Guide

“I would happily recommend all Russophiles buy this disc for the stunning Medtner performances alone” CD Review

"exhilirating and played with great virtuosity [Lutoslawski] ... Argerich and Freire give a dazzling virtuoso account ... and their performance is thoroughly exhilirating [Rachmaninov]."The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs

“The pleasure of making music is always uppermost in a performance by Argerich, and she imbued Freire with the same spirit for this exhilarating recital, slightly undermined by muddy sound.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2007 ****

“Who would have guessed, when Naxos entered the CD market with buckets of budget-priced recordings by no-name instrumentalists and provincial Eastern-European orchestras, that 20 years later they would be offering the likes of this disc, featuring two of Britain's most distinguished and widely recorded pianists in the major two-piano works of Rachmaninov? The result is an hour and a quarter of first-rate music-making, and probably the finest single-disc version of the suites that I have heard.” Fanfare