Leif Ove Andsnes is a leading pianist of his time, known for his exceptional musicianship and subtil touch, his considerable technical flair being unfailingly put at the service of his interpretations. He was a pioneer for being the first home-trained superstar pianist to have emerged from Norway. This box is the story of a 20-year partnership that has yielded a rich seam of recorded treasures, first for Virgin and then for EMI. Running through this cornucopia of 34 albums (36 CDs), we find recurring themes: Grieg (Andsnes even recorded some Lyric Pieces on the composer’s own piano at Troldhaugen), Nordic music in general, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Schubert.

There were occasions during the three decades when the LP record ruled supreme - from the 1950s to the 1970s - when the chemistry between an orchestra, its conductor and their record company combined to work a magic that the commitment of long-term recording contracts quite often made possible. Karajan and the Philharmonia; Ansermet and the Suisse Romande; Dorati and the Minneapolis; Münch and the Boston Symphony, Cluytens and the Paris Conservatoire and Previn and the London Symphony are all prime examples of such collaborations. All of these produced recorded performances that are as fine today as they ever were and are all well-represented in the current CD catalogues. Until now there has been one successful recording collaboration that seems almost to have slipped under the radar: the Pittsburgh Symphony, William Steinberg and the Capitol Records producer, Richard C. Jones.

It's hard to believe that any pianist, living or dead (or, probably, yet-to-be-born) could match, much less surpass, these performances. It was Richter, after all, who made Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition almost as important an item in the standard repertory of the piano as Ravel's orchestration is in that of the orchestra. And it was Richter's performances of it, as well as his example, that have ignited the interest of subsequent generations of pianists in the Bunte Blätter, heretofore one of the most obscure works in the Schumann canon.

On October 6, 1953, RCA held experimental stereophonic sessions in New York's Manhattan Center with Leopold Stokowski conducting a group of New York musicians in performances of Enesco's Roumanian Rhapsody No. 1 and the waltz from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. There were additional stereo tests in December, again in the Manhattan Center, this time with Pierre Monteux conducting members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In February 1954, RCA made its first commercial stereophonic recordings, taping the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, in a performance of The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz.

The legendary American pianist Byron Janis, who turns 95 in March 2023, was the first pupil of another iconic pianist - Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz famously told Janis 'I don't want you to be a 'second Horowitz' I want you to be a 'first Janis'.' Janis certainly established himself on the world stage when he made his Carnegie Hall debut recital in October 1948, garnering a rave review from the New York Times' Olin Downes who praised him as a distinctive artist in his own right destined for a major career. Between 1960 and 1964 Janis made a set of remarkable recordings for the Mercury Living Presence label.

Boris Godunov is a work that, with its long, continuous scenes and monumental structure, does not lend itself easily to a highlights disc, especially if the intention is to give a fair cross-section of the opera. The producers of this compilation, drawn from a complete recording originally issued by Erato, wisely concentrate the choice on a few substantial chunks, covering most of Boris’s part. To this they add a couple of snippets that can stand on their own, out of context.

Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter was born on March 20, 1915 (Julian: March 7) in Zhitomir in present-day Ukraine. His father Teofil (Theophilus) came from a German commercial family. The famous Russian piano teacher Heinrich Neuhaus (of German origin) recognized his huge talent and enrol led him in his piano master cl ass at the Moscow Conservatory in 1 937. Profil Edition Gunter Hanssl er is progressively releasing all the recordings that the great Soviet virtuoso made between 1945 and 1963. Most of them were largely unknown in the West during the Cold War, as Richter could only perform til I 1960 behind the ""Iron Curtain"", that is to say, in the Soviet Union and the sate I lite states of Eastern Europe.

Lars Vogt (1970-2022) early recordings collected here provide a document of an artist who always remained authentic, both to himself and to music. Lars Vogt never sought absolute truth, but truthfulness instead meant all the more to him. The man and the artist were always very close, never currying favour and never detached from the world. He was, instead, open and natural. / "It's incredibly gratifying when you notice that you can perhaps light a little spark, a little flame for music in people, and when music helps you to find the path to your own soul."

For this second collaboration between the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Emmanuel Krivine and Zig-Zag Territoires, two major Russian works were chosen. Both make the orchestra sound sumptuous with, for the first, the complicity of that fantastic colourist and orchestrator Maurice Ravel, and for the second, the skill of a composer nicknamed ‘the magician of the orchestra’. Emmanuel Krivine excels in these works, which demand much of all the musicians and necessitate as much commitment as perspicacity from the conductor, at the service of scores magnifying the fantastic musical instrument that is the modern symphony orchestra.

Il conseguimento del II premio (I non assegnato) al Concorso dell’ARD di Monaco nel 1993 e l’immediato invito del Cidim a far parte dei gruppi di punta scelti dall’Italia per Nuove Carriere nel 1994, promuovono ben presto il gruppo a un livello di visibilità e qualità artistica salutate unanimemente da vivissimo interesse. Il Bibiena da allora effettua centinaia di concerti in Italia, Francia, Austria, Germania, Sudamerica e molti altri paesi.

… you get here is perhaps the best of all worlds: a major symphonic work idiomatically played by a first-rate virtuoso orchestra under the hands of a conductor whose contact with the work looks back to the symphony's very creation, captured in vivid, realistic sound none of the russian maestros mentioned above could ever aspire to.

The Mussorgsky Pictures is the most unusual and most interesting reading of the set. Starting with a carefully molded legato opening trumpet tune, Celibidache puts forth an amply lyrical interpretation, one awash in warm, glowing orchestral colors that, unlike in his Scheherazade, do not get lost in the wash. Every number receives special attention to its particular nuance, Bydlo being just one example, while the finale’s grand solemnity (and massive slowness) makes for a truly moving conclusion.

Sergei Leiferkus has a fine and distinctive baritone, but what makes him a truly exceptional singer is his formidable talent as an actor, and never has this been more persuasively captured on record than here. From his electrifying and chilling interpretation of Songs and Dances of Death, in which, as Death, he assumes four very different guises (vindictive, romantic, seductive and bellicose), to the bright, faux-naïf songs of The Nursery, where, with no sense of awkwardness, he affects an improbably high but convincingly childlike voice, rattling off the silly ‘ta-ta-ta-ta’s of ‘Hobby-Horse’ with aplomb, then slipping seamlessly into the familiar adult tone of the nanny or parent, he demonstrates daunting versatility.