GRAMOPHONE Editor`s Choice - September 2006

“Here is music-making to wonder at. Rarely in their history can the two concertos have been performed with such meticulous care and affection. The Luxembourg-born, 25-year-old pianist includes Pletnev – his more-thandistinguished partner on this disc – among his teachers and has won first prize in one of the less celebrated competitions (so often venues of true musical discovery).
What sadness and introspection he conveys beneath Ravel`s clowning surface, shadowed, as it were, by the Left Hand Concerto, by an inwardness mirrored in his own haunting Three Improvisations. The central Adagio emerges as a timeless reverie, making it hard to recall a performance of greater magic or tonal translucency, a far cry indeed from a more superficial tradition emanating from Marguerite Long, the work`s dedicatee. In the Prokofiev Schlimé and Pletnev take an almost chamber music-like view of the grotesquerie and acrobatics and the result is lyrical and musicianly in a wholly fresh and unsuspected way. Nothing sounds bleak or conventionally percussive and a mysterious, winterfairytale aura hangs over the entire work (never more so than in the Larghetto).
Schlimé confesses that he has always felt impelled to play what he calls his `other` music, in this case improvised reflections on the two concertos. Recorded late one night in the Moscow Conservatoire, they were added with Pletnev`s blessing, and the concluding mournful, jazzman`s chime is very much music that registers `long after it was heard no more`.
Pentatone`s sound and balance are exemplary.” GRAMOPHONE CLASSICAL GOOD CD GUIDE

“Here is music-making to wonder at. Rarely can the two concertos have been performed with such meticulous care and affection. The Luxembourg-born, 25-year-old pianist includes Pletnev among his teachers. What sadness and introspection he conveys beneath Ravel`s clowning surface... The central Adagio emerges as a timeless reverie, making it hard to recall a performance of greater magic or tonal translucency... In the Prokofiev, Schlimé and Pletnev take an almost chamber music-like view of the grotesquerie and acrobatics, and the result is lyrical and musicianly in a wholly fresh and unsuspected way. ...Schlimé`s... improvised reflections on the two concertos... were added with Pletnev`s blessing, and the concluding mournful, jazzman`s chime is very much music that registers `long after it was heard no more`.” GRAMOPHONE