I have mixed feelings about this disc. The orchestra are not especially good and over-large while the conducting by Dmitri Kitaenko is ponderous, a fact noticeable at once in the E minor Concerto where the opening tutti (admittedly dull music with its conventional gestures) just lumbers along. Then Evgeni Kissin enters with a heavy pair of hands—especially so when you consider that he was a mere 12 years old when this recording was made. Things do improve, and the young Kissin delivers the second subject with more style and some charm, but basically this is a graceless performance characterized by good secure pianists' fingers and not very much beyond that.
Kissin has of course improved greatly in the last five years, as those who saw his New Year's Eve TV performance of the Tchaikovsky First Concerto with Karajan will know, and the recording of the Rachmaninov Second Concerto and some of the Op. 39 Etudes-tableaux (RCA (CD) RD87982 3/89) was given a warm welcome by DJF. But the poetry of the Larghetto second movement eludes him (and on an even cruder level, one longs for him to play quietly once in a while!), though the finale suits him and the conductor better. The 'Second' Concerto in E minor—quotation marks because it was written before the First—is played first here, but there is a bad confusion on the reverse of the jewel-case, where the F minor Concerto is wrongly listed first with the movement timings from the E minor. The F minor Concerto goes distinctly better than the E minor, notably in its Romance (Larghetto) and finale, and please don't mistake me, this is an exceptional gift for a 12-year-old.
However, a collector looking not just to salute great gifts but to acquire the best currently available version of these two concertos will not, I think, be tempted to acquire this CD in preference to Zimerman's similar coupling with Giulini and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra on DG, a spacious and aristocratic account of both works, sometimes too spacious in that (for example) it takes over four minutes to get to the piano entry in the E minor Concerto, but still convincing overall. The versions of No. 1 by Perahia (CBS) and Pollini (EMI) link respectively with the Leeds and Warsaw Competitions and are rightly famous for a special brilliance and insight, and Cherkassky with the RPO under Kempe on Minuet/Target also has real distinction, but in practical terms I would think Zimerman with his great understanding of his compatriot's youthful idiom is the pianist to have.'