Pietro Delle Chiaie - Czerny: Complete Organ Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

John Stanley was born in London on 17 January 1712. A precocious musician, by the age of nine he was playing the organ (probably as an occasional deputy) at All Hallows, Bread Street.When the titular organist there - the composer and harpsichordist William Babell, a former pupil of Handel - died on 23 September 1723, an eleven year-old Stanley was appointed in his place. At the age of 14 he was chosen as organist at St. Andrew's, Holborn and at the age of 17 became the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree from Oxford University. In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Society of the Inner Temple, a position he held until his death. As a musician whose primary responsibilities were liturgical, John Stanley was required to accompany the service music every Sunday, and also to improvise voluntaries at various points in the service. A voluntary was a piece improvised extemporaneously and, prior to the 19th century, in the Church of England there were two principal forms of voluntary. These were a First Voluntary - generally an introduction and a movement or two for solo stops such as the trumpet or cornet - placed between the psalms and the first lesson at Morning and Evening Prayer, and a Second Voluntary - generally an introduction and fugue - at the end of the service. John Stanley's primary responsibility in his sixty-three years as organist at these various churches, was to improvise a voluntary before the first lesson (comprising an introduction and an additional movement or two for the solo stops) and an introduction and fugue at the end of the service. Stanley's improvisations were reportedly so fine that on Sundays none other than Handel himself, who attended St. George's, Hanover Square, would sometimes leave church early and rush over to the Temple Church to hear Stanley's final voluntary.Most voluntaries were never written down as compositions, and

As the probably apocryphal recipient of a kiss from the ailing and elderly Beethoven, Franz Liszt was celebrated by his contemporaries as 'the' successor, the keeper of the flame, no less than several other composers equally deserving of that accolade from Schubert and Schumann to Brahms and Wagner. The connection between Liszt and Beethoven, however, is particularly strong in the medium of the piano, through which they spoke to the audiences of their time with a voice of untrammelled authority and vigor. Liszt's project to transcribe the nine symphonies of Beethoven occupied him, on and off, for almost three decades. His aim was not merely to compress all the crucial instrumental voices within the compass of a single keyboard and ten fingers. More ambitiously, his transcriptions strive to 'grasp the spirit of the work as well as the letter', as he indicated in a preface to the collection. The Liszt/Beethoven Fifth is certainly no less bold, striking or relentless a path-breaking piece than the original, perhaps especially suited to the piano medium by virtue of it's first movement's defining and intrinsically percussive nature, which has attracted interpreters of the calibre of Glenn Gould and Paul Badura-Skoda. Now the marvelously gifted Leonardo Pierdomenico joins their ranks, with a critically acclaimed Piano Classics debut of.' little-known Liszt already under his belt 'a stunning debut' according to Gramophone. 'Would that half the seasoned Lisztians I know had Pierdomenico's keen ear for stylistic differentiation within this half-century of repertory. His highly developed technique and cultivated sound, both adaptable to a variety of affects, are wedded to those twin essentials for artistic Liszt-playing imagination combined with thoroughgoing, scrupulous musicality. Album Tracks 1. Symphony No. 5 Op. 67 (S. 464/5)~I. Allegro con brio 2. Symphony No.

An elegant selection of Tango masterpieces, from Piazzolla to the fiery fiddles of Gypsy tango, from Argentinean Milongas and Waltzes to modern Finnish Tango - some of the world's finest! Album Tracks 1. Milonga de Mis Amores 2. Orillera 3. Pedacito de Cielo 4. Tanguera 5. Nocturna 6. Taconeando 7. Volver 8. Rio de Horo 9. Ikävä Omia Maita 10. Allegro Tangabile 11. Malena 12. Natalia 13. Avarasylisen Naisen Laulu 14. Payadora 15. The Very End 16. Oye 17. Invierno Porteño 18. La Puñalada 19. El Mayoral Del Tranvia