Michelangeli was a peerless aristocrat of the piano. He had made his recording début for HMV in Milan in 1939, and in 1942 went into studios in the same city to record two major concertos for German Telefunken. Schumann’s Piano Concerto is played with a dazzling, almost improvisatory freedom, whereas the Grieg Piano Concerto is a forthright, poetic and virtuosic performance, albeit one of great warmth. The smaller pieces reveal his outstanding gradations of tone. Remarkably, Michelangeli never re-recorded either concerto again in the studio.