‘Fire-eating virtuoso’ is how Stereo Review described the finales of the Rachmaninoff concertos recorded by pianist Rafael Orozco (1952–1992) with Edo de Waart. Collected here are the complete Philips recordings of one of Spain’s piano aristocracy, winner of the 1966 Leeds Piano Competition. There is passion and poetry in equal measure, and an instinctive feeling […]
Taking Second Prize at the 2023 Sydney International Piano Competition, the Belarussian pianist Uladzislau (Vladislav) Khandohi stunned jury and audience members alike with phenomenally precise and committed accounts of repertoire from Schubert via Chopin and Prokofiev to Mark Grandison. His solo-repertoire performances from the competition are presented here in an album which will cause pianophiles […]
Sonatas by Beethoven, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Janáček display the artistry and pianistic firepower of Wynona Wang in live performances from the 2023 Sydney International Piano Competition, in which she was a popular finalist. As a finalist at The Sydney, Wang demonstrated a questing musical mind in her chosen solo repertoire. The Beijing-born, Juilliard-trained pianist explored […]
Released 17 June 2022 Covering the first five years of their partnership on Mercury, this edition celebrates the legacy of French conductor, Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Recorded from 1953 to 1957, during the golden era of the orchestra, this original jacket collection includes both mono and early stereo recordings, remastered from the […]
A clear crowd favourite at the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition (SIPCA) due to his incendiary technique and warm stage presence, Moye Chen was awarded the George Frederick Boyle Prize and was signed to Universal Music Australia shortly after. For his debut recording – released in Australia on the legendary Deutsche Grammophon label – the Chinese pianist […]
On two days in October 2016, Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and Australian cellist Catherine Hewgill went into the studio to make their first recording together. An all-Russian program, it features the Cello Sonatas of Shostakovich and Prokofiev with the added pendant of the Rachmaninov Vocalise in an arrangement by American cellist Leonard Rose. […]
A debut on CD for the American Decca legacy of Ruth Slenczynska, a prodigious Romantic-age keyboard lioness. The biography for her Wigmore Hall recital in March 1957 claimed that the 32-year-old Ruth Slenczynska had given 1600 concerts. Scarcely believably, perhaps, but no less so than other elements of her extraordinary life story – making her […]
The complete Decca recordings of a much-loved English pianist, including previously unissued material, newly remastered and issued with a comprehensive introduction to her early life and recording career. When Moura Lympany first visited Decca’s West Hampstead studios in 1941 to record a pair of Preludes by Rachmaninov, even the composer himself had committed no more […]
The early recordings of a keyboard lioness, long unavailable and new to CD. Not generally given to extravagant effusions, William Glock (Controller of Radio 3 and the BBC Proms in the 1970s) had no doubt: ‘There is no one who plays the piano better in the world than she does. There is no one with […]
A newly compiled, generous, 4CD collection of high-octane Russian orchestral masterpieces, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the firebrand musicianship of Dutch maestro Edo de Waart. ‘In my profession,’ remarked Edo de Waart in a 1990 interview, ‘you need the affrontery to believe you have an alternative with something to say […]
‘In every way the most transcendentally gifted young piano student I have heard in the last 25 years’ was Percy Grainger’s pronouncement of the young Eileen Joyce (1908–1991) when he first heard her play in 1926. From the goldfields in Western Australia whose capital city is the most remote in the world, Joyce defied incongruous and […]
Throughout a career spanning over 60 years, Dame Moura Lympany was closely associated with the music of Rachmaninov. It began as an unlikely meeting of minds and fingers: what was this slight and beautiful young Englishwoman doing with music that needed the composer’s own huge hands to span its ninths and tenths, written by a […]
