Various Artists - Classical Piano Music / Various - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Astounding debuts and legendary piano treasures on disc newly remastered albums of 21 pianists from the analogue era, including many first-ever digital transfers. Before he became a Decca icon, Vladimir Ashkenazy appeared on DG in performances recorded live at the 1955 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Their reissue here is complemented by a Rachmaninoff sequence with Ashkenazy's teacher, Lev Oborin. At the same competition five years later, Arthur Rubinstein was so outraged at the low placing given by his fellow jurors to the Belgian pianist Michel Block that he created a special prize for him on the spot, and DG responded likewise by issuing precious recordings of his live Chopin performances from 1960. Through the late 1960s and 70s, the 'Concours' and 'Debut' sub-labels on DG launched an array of pianists at the start of promising careers. They came from a rich variety of backgrounds and schools. Blockbuster Russians included Boris Bloch and Youri Egorov. New-World stars in the making included Steven de Groote and Zola Mae Shaulis. Among the young artists from the central European traditions were Veronica Jochum von Moltke (Eugen Jochum's daughter) and Claude Helffer. A few of these musicians, such as Ashkenazy, went on to enjoy long careers. Some disappeared from the limelight, lending to their legacy on record both rarity value and a melancholy sense of potential left untapped. David Lively, Alexander Lonquich and Ewa Poblocka are still performing today, but their DG Debut albums have never been reissued on CD. Dino Ciani, Youri Egorov and Steven de Groote died tragically young while their careers were still in the ascendant. Other pianists retreated from the spotlight and became teachers, such as Roberto Szidon and Boris Bloch. Alongside the fire-breathing virtuosity of Mikhail Faermann and Steven de Groote, the box reissues Beethoven sonata recordings made by Ell

The pianist Maria Kihlgren studied at Göteborgs Musikhögskola and at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna gaining her diploma in 1979. She has performed in Sweden and several European countries, the USA and South America. In recent years she has also devoted herself to recordings. Her albums, with solo music for piano on the Sterling tag, have been internationally acclaimed. All of them have a specific theme, with cover pictures by her father, the painter Carl Speglitz. The present includes works by Scarlatti, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Reger, Debussy, de Falla, and more.

Of all the instruments that have marked the course of musical history, the piano has certainly gone through one of the most remarkable evolutions. It began as an intermediary, transitory stage between two instrumental traditions. Following it's invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori at the beginning of the 18 the century, the piano gradually replaced the plucked strings of the harpsichord with a hammered, striking action; this innovation enabled a far wider range of dynamic nuance, increasingly winning over musicians and composers in the 18th and above all in the 19th century. After Cristofori, the German keyboard maker Gottfried Silbermann further developed the instrument, and it's sound eventually became more like that of the modern piano as we know it. In the quest for interpretations that get as close as possible to those of past eras, some of today's pianists have adopted the early pianoforte, offering the listener the opportunity to discover the sounds the composer would have heard and conceived. Firmly convinced of the rightness of this approach, Alpha has collected 10 albums of these recordings, in an attractively produced set, presenting works by a number of different composers, including Haydn, Chopin, Beethoven and Schumann, performed by some of the tag's iconic pianists, such as Freddy Eichelberger, Jos van Immerseel, Alexei Lubimov, and Eric Le Sage.