The extraordinary hold Fassbaender exerts over audiences, in the concert hall and on record, surely derives from her singular strength of personality reflected in her dark, vibrant mezzo with its emotional overtones evident in every bar she sings. Even when an excess of vibrato intervenes, which happens seldom in this recital, it seems part of the very individual and immediately recognizable Fassbaender manner.

Many of Liszt’s works were transcribed for other instruments; both by the composer himself and other musicians. These hauntingly beautiful pieces for cello and piano were originally written for piano solo or the voice. They are from the final period of his life and are the product of his old age and his quest for spirituality. Far from the virtuoso brilliance of his earlier works, their intense and romantic melodies express melancholy and desolation, the sparse textures and harmonic instability daringly looking forward to the twentieth century.

A pianist’s dream: a rare and precious testament of a great pianist’s vision (Busoni) of another’s (Liszt) work. Very popular repertoire in extremely rare versions. Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) was one of the most gifted pianists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as being a composer of considerable importance and vision. A child prodigy, he debuted at the age of 12, being quickly marked out as a piano virtuoso unlike any other. His reputation for many years rested on his remarkable transcriptions of J.S Bach, which tended to overshadow both his original compositions and his other transcriptions.

On its face, this CD is a real curiosity because Daniel Barenboim offers his first-ever recordings of Franz Liszt's two piano concertos, and Pierre Boulez leads the Berlin Staatskapelle in performances that would have been unimaginable when these artists were younger. Barenboim, a subtle intellectual at the keyboard, is one of the last pianists one would envision playing the flashy, virtuosic parts of these works, while Boulez, once the supposed enemy of all things Romantic, seems to have yielded at last to the attractions of Liszt's vision and conceded that these grandiose warhorses contain music of considerable merit.

Vladimir Horowitz possessed freakishly superb technical equipment, plus inspiration and a mercurial imagination that caused him to never play the same work twice in the same way. There has been no greater writer of pianistic works in the history of the instrument. There was never a better ear for piano color, and his performances usually succeeded in giving a work "the stamp of approval" causing his contemporaries to begin programming works he chose to champion. The was, and is, nobody who can imitate Horowitz, for his genius was truly a never ending source of inspiration.

Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder’s latest album, Soirée de Vienne, features music by Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann and Strauss and celebrates his home city. The recording captures both the lost world of salon soirées and Vienna’s legendary attitude to life, with its heady blend of intensity and insouciance, earthiness and beauty.

I have always had rather a soft spot for Michele Campanella playing Liszt. This dates back to when he was the pianist on the first LP of Liszt I ever bought – a Pye disc of him playing the two concertos. With the bi-centenary of Liszt’s birth looming in the Autumn this is the first of the year’s celebratory sets that I have encountered. It should be noted however, as with the bulk of Brilliant Classics releases, these are licensed re-releases although in this case the provenance is not totally clear.

Liszt's three volumes of Annees de pelerinage are rarely recorded complete, largely because many pianists remain baffled by the dark-hued prophecy and romanticism of the third and final book. So it is particularly gratifying to welcome Lazar Berman's superb 1977 DG recordings back into the catalogue, particularly when so finely remastered on CD. Berman is hardly celebrated as the most subtle or refined of pianists, but at his greatest he combines grandeur and sensibility to a rare degree and his response to Book Three, in particular, is of the highest musical quality and poetic insight.

This 1990 disc featuring Grieg's Piano Concerto and Liszt's Second Piano Concerto, with six of Grieg's Lyric Pieces for solo piano, was Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes' big label debut as a soloist. It was a smash, and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. Andsnes has gone on to one of the most successful careers of any pianist of his generation. Hearing the performances in this un-remastered reissue, it's easy to understand why: Andsnes is a fire-eater of a piano player.

With ‘La Ronde’, Nicholas Angelich pays tribute to the relationships between three of Romanticism’s greatest composers for the piano. Schumann, Chopin and Liszt were born within 18 months of each other and knew each other personally. Schumann dedicated Kreisleriana to Chopin, who dedicated two of his Op.10 Etudes to Liszt, who, closing the circle, dedicated his B minor Piano Sonata to Schumann.

In 1999, conductor Daniel Barenboim and scholar Edward Said created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to be a cultural bridge between young Israeli, Arab, and Iranian musicians, and the success of the enterprise has not only raised public awareness of their worthy cause, but also yielded some remarkable recordings. Celebrating the tenth anniversary of the orchestra's formation, Barenboim leads the orchestra in performances of two works linked to the city where the group held its first workshops, Weimar, where associations with Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt are still strong.