**** Phyllis Bryn-Julson and John Shirley-Quirk with Leon Fleisher

SCHUMANN SONG CYCLES

(Arabesque)

**** Leon Fleisher with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra

BRAHMS CONCERTOS, ETC.

(Sony Masterworks Heritage)

Pianist Leon Fleisher has probably been in the news more often for not playing the piano than for playing it so well. More than three decades ago, repetitive stress syndrome forced him to give up playing with his right hand. More recently, his resignation as artistic director of the Tanglewood Music Center made headlines and he canceled his only scheduled Boston concert appearance. Some new recordings, though, remind us of Fleisher's real significance.

For his first two-hand recording in 35 years, you might have expected at least a concerto or a sonata -- some work that gives primary importance to the soloist. But his latest consists of accompanying three Schumann song cycles. The singing is left to two well-known vocalists, soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson and (better) baritone John Shirley-Quirk, neither of them in the full flush of youthful freshness. There's the Opus 24 Liederkreis ("Song Collection"), Frauenliebe und -leben ("A Woman's Love and Life"), and the heartstopping Dichterliebe ("A Poet's Love").

Dichterliebe includes some of Schumann's most beautiful and intimate writing for the piano. The accompaniment doesn't just give the singers breathing space or tell them what key to sing in -- it's a kind of running commentary on the poems, expanding or undercutting the emotion. There are exquisite, evocative preludes to the songs, and the extraordinary postludes are like the last chapters of 19th-century Russian novels that tell us what happens to the characters after the story is officially over. In Dichterliebe, Heine's 16 short poems trace the misery of a failed relationship. But Schumann's final postlude has something not in the words themselves, a mysterious backward glance from the transcendent world of art where the poet/singer/composer has finally found his resting place. It's more than a minute and a half of just piano, and Fleisher gives this music the most sensitive and mysterious reading imaginable.

Fleisher's marvelous Brahms recordings on Epic (made between 1956 and 1962) have finally reappeared: the two Piano Concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, the Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel, and the irresistible Opus 39 waltzes. They're as fresh as ever. Fleisher is both powerful and scintillating without ever sounding fussy or overblown. He plays with the startling notion that you can convey energy and passion with clarity and tact. And the heartening news is that on his brand new recording he's lost none of these qualities.

-- Lloyd Schwartz