Adagio Ma Non Troppo, by Ryoko Sekiguchi

This release celebrates and commemorates Yo-Yo Ma's 30 year recording career with Sony Music. Created with the full participation of Yo-Yo Ma, 30 Years Outside the Box, is the definitive collection of this iconic artist. The box set contains every original album Yo-Yo Ma has recorded including 2 discs of rare and never before released material.

In 1819 composer and publisher Anton Diabelli got the idea to invite composers from the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire to compose variations on a waltz by his own hand. This was meant to be a monument of the musical art of his time, and a money maker for his publishing house. A lot of composers, 51 in total, answered to his request, and sent their variations, among whom celebrities like Liszt, Schubert, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Moscheles. The most famous composer of the time, Ludwig van Beethoven, first rejected the idea in scorn, later however wrote his immense Opus 120, comprising no less than 33 variations on the theme, thus outpassing his “competitors” by an immeasurable degree in both invention and profundity.

While any of Liszt's superb transcriptions of Beethoven's first eight symphonies is a challenge for the pianist, the two-piano arrangement of the Ninth is at once spellbinding and a formidable test. This remarkable synthesis of soloists, chorus and orchestra presents a powerful structure that condenses all the fearsome difficulties of ensemble playing for the two pianists. This version by Philippe Cassard and Cédric Pescia displays extraordinary nobility, truth and grandeur, with the epic sweep ideally suited to the "Ode to Joy".