Conductor(s):
Colin Davis

Orchestra(s):
London Symphony Orchestra

Artist(s):
Joaquín Achúcarro; London Symphony Orchestra; Colin Davis

"Achúcarro’s approach is unorthodox in today’s stick-to-theletter-of-the-score, mechanically perfect musical world. His rubati seem excessive to some; to others, like a throwback to a Golden Age. For all of his reverence for the great composers whose music he plays, he maintains a healthy sense of their humanity as well. “Our duty is first of all to understand what composer does and wants, and then to try to deliver it the best we can, but also to serve the music,” he says. “And maybe sometimes the composer is wrong.” He adds, “People say you must follow the text. But if you follow the text, perhaps the music is not totally served.”...And he views what he does as a performer as an act of creation in its own right." (The Washington Post)

"The short recital filmed in the Prado captures Achúcarro at his intimate best." (Gramophone)

"... a deeply impressive reading of the highest quality. Achúcarro is a modest and quietly spoken man, reserrved and unassuming, but at the keyboard he becomes the superb artist whose admirers know him to be: this is not 'Achúcarro's Brahms' but 'Brahms'; I can pay him no greater compliment than that." (International Record Review)

"I can't remember when I last came across a preformance with as many spine-tingling monents, contributed here by this master-pianist and a mellow-toned LSO, with Colin Davis calmly commanding from the podium." (Classic fM ★★★★★)