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Early last year I found a healthy assortment of recordings of mostly core rep on UMG Italy's website and was prompted to buy a pretty good number of discs. I ended up buying a couple groups of recordings, and I am eyeing even more as some newer titles have recently been added. Most of the...

A few years ago I bought Anton Kuerti’s 1970s Beethoven sonata cycle and was decidedly turned off by what I heard. A few sonatas struck me as very well done, and the Op 31/1 is among the best I’ve heard. But most of the sonatas are too slow, too idiosyncratic, and just not much fun to listen to...

Earlier this year I figured I needed to listen to more Schubert. Specifically the solo piano works. More particularly the sonatas, though the other works were welcome. What I was looking for was a nice sample of various works performed by the same artist to get a grasp of how the artist handles...

About a year-and-a-half or two years ago or so, I bought an EMI twofer on Youri Egorov playing piano works by Robert Schumann. A good number of Schumann fans and piano fans had written comments ranging from the strongly favorable to the dizzyingly effusive about the set and Egorov’s playing, so...

Last year when I read that Pierre Boulez had conducted Janacek’s From the House of the Dead, and that it would be made available on DVD, I was surprised and thrilled. Surprised because I never really thought Boulez would conduct something as “primitive” as Janacek. (Primitive is how Boulez...

Early this year I picked up a new recording of Schumann’s Fantasie and Kreisleriana by the young American pianist Jonathan Biss. While I enjoyed (and still enjoy) the disc, it didn’t bowl me over. What did strike me most about the recording was Mr Biss’ superb tonal control and dynamic...

I wasn’t really in the market for another cycle of Shostakovich’s string quartets, but whilst perusing the ‘S’ section of the local CD hut, I stumbled upon the complete cycle played by the Beethoven Quartet in one niftily handy box from Doremi. The price was (and is) a bit steep at full price...

Is it or ? That’s one tough call. At the beginning of the year I picked up Abbey Simon’s 1970s Vox recordings of Ravel’s solo piano music and was simply amazed. I’d tried Simon’s Chopin before, and while it’s good, it simply...

Even being an enthusiastic fan of Szymanowski, I’d never gotten around to listening to his songs for voice and piano – until now. I really wish I hadn’t waited so long. The spiffy four-disc set of all of Szymanowski’s songs on Channel Classics is something of a revelation. Dozens and...

I dithered over this set for a while. I wanted to hear Michel Block’s take on Iberia, but I didn’t know for sure that he was the one playing the work. I saw no need to get Aldo Ciccolini in this work in this box since his set is available on its own, and I had no idea who Gonzalo Soriano or...

I don’t like the fortepiano. Never have. It’s not clear, bright, and plucky like a harpsichord; it’s not richly sonorous, powerful, and commanding like a real piano. It’s stuck uncomfortably in between those two superior instruments. I’ve listened to various fortepiano recordings over the...

Why buy only one new LvB sonata disc when you can buy two? When I snapped up the latest Schiff offering, I also picked up the new Decca recording of Nelson Freire playing four sonatas, including the Mondschein, so I could do a direct comparison between the two pianists. The Schiff disc was a...

I got a hankering to hear both a new LvB piano concerto cycle and a bunch of new Emperor recordings, so I started snooping, and what did I find? A new-ish release of a “younger” Russell Sherman playing the Big Five! Now, I’ve known about his newer live recording of the concertos with the...

I can still be surprised. Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of Angela Hewitt. I’ve heard some of her Bach, and some of her Ravel (the latter only whilst browsing at a CD store), and what I have heard has never really intrigued me very much; I’ve never felt prompted to rush out and gobble...

New to me at least. As my journey through complete cycles of Beethoven’s piano sonatas winds down (though it may take months to get everything written, if I go that route), I began to wonder what will become my buying and listening focus. And no, it (probably) won’t be Beethoven’s symphonies...

Daniel Barenboim has joined the elitist of elite categories, at least as far as complete cycles of Beethoven’s sonatas are concerned. He has recorded the cycle three times, a feat otherwise accomplished only by Alfred Brendel. (Or maybe not. An Andante box refers to three complete cycles by...

Late last year I noticed a little blurb of an ad for a new recording of the complete piano music of Karol Szymanowski played by one Sinae Lee on the Divine Art label. I’d never seen reference to either, or at least I didn’t remember seeing either mentioned before, but since I’m always on the...

I figured I ought to give at least one other young-ish contemporary pianist a shot in Elveebee’s solo piano music. But who? Who am I kidding, I picked this up because Angelich starts with 'A', and eventually I’ll work my way through as close to every pianist who’s played this music as my bank...

Yet another on-going cycle it seems. Or at least I hope. (Or do I?) PentaTone, led by erstwhile Philips execs, has released three hybrid SACDs of Mari Kodama playing some of LvB’s sonatas. That sure seems like a cycle in the making, though it may not be. Anyway, in order to get my feet wet...

The good folks working on the BBC Legends series managed to put together another CD of performances by St Annie, so I had to hear it. This time around the disc is filled with three big works that Annie played many times and that suit her style. There’s Schumann’s great Carnaval, and a pair of...