What should you do when you're up against some serious competition? One thing not to do is to play the field on their own terms. You should approach the project in question from a differing perspective or take a different tack. Combined, there are over 300 recordings of the Piano Concertos 1 & 2 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). And many of the more recent accounts have turned these already hefty and momentous works into fat, lumbering sumo wrestlers. Some overbearingly so.

Here, with the support of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, an aptly sized period-instrument ensemble active since 1986, and the use of an 1859 Blüthner piano, András Schiff sets out to trim away some of the accumulated excess fat, and recreates the experience from a 19th century point of view. After all, the sound and proportions that Brahms had in mind would have been based on what he heard around him at the time. And mind you, this has been done before as in this excellent recording by pianist Hardy Rittner.

And since in this recording András Schiff assumes both the duties of pianist and conductor and has complete artistic control over the outcome, there's no struggle or battle for sonic supremacy prevalent in so many other accounts. This results into a no less forceful interpretation, but with added textural clarity and rhythmic drive. Some of the finer orchestration details are more clearly apparent as well. And most noticeably apparent during the Adagio movement of the No. 1 in in D minor, Op. 15, is that when the orchestra swells up, its limited 50-member size never drowns out any of the piano passages. The 1859 Julius Blüthner instrument used for this recording is the largest model built by his firm at that time. What it may lack in the bottom range it completely makes up for in midrange clarity and detail. And in what usually sounds like a desperate race to the finish line during the final minutes of the same Op. 15, here concludes as a hand in hand photo finish.