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Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has certainly broken more boundaries than any other picker in recent memory, from his early days performing bluegrass-inspired folk compositions on Rounder in the late '70s to his quirky jazz freak-outs with the Flecktones throughout the '90s. In late 2001, this peculiar innovator released an album of banjo interpretations of classical works by Bach, Chopin, and Scarlatti. Before classical purists roll their eyes, they must remember that the banjo hasn't always been seen as the instrument of choice of backwoods musicians in the Appalachian mountains, but as recently as the 1940s was used as a primary rhythm instrument in all manner of parlor music.

This recording of the complete Preludes of Frederick Chopin represents the debut on Telarc Classics of the highly regarded young Venezuelan-American pianist Vanessa Perez. In recent years she has been championed as one of the best young musical talents on the scene by the likes of legendary pianist Claudio Arrau and the great conductor Zubin Mehta.

Mosaic Select is a jazz reissue series of numbered limited-edition releases that focus on an artist's important but neglected work in a 3 CD set.
This most recent addition to Mosaic's limited edition Select series bundles five early Weston releases from 1957-63, plus half an hour of unreleased material and one piece from a Roulette sampler.

This release features a collection of what might be called piano orphans: commercial and non-commercial recordings of great pianists that simply have never found their way onto compact disc. Among these treasures are fifteen minutes of Dinu Lipatti playing Scarlatti and Brahms that have only recently surfaced; an unpublished disc of Alfred Cortot playing the “Russian Dance” from Petroushka; and previously unpublished excerpts of the Tchaikovsky first piano concerto played by Vladimir Horowitz with the Philadelphia Orchestra, recorded during a 1932 concert conducted by Fritz Reiner and recorded as an experiment by the Bell Telephone Laboratory. This is Horowitz's earliest known concert performance and is in amazing sound for that time. It is unfortunate that the entire concerto was not recorded, but hearing these excerpts will be a revelation for Horowitz fans. Also included are live concerto performances by Lev Puishnov and Guiomar Novaes. We feel certain that piano enthusiasts worldwide will treasure this 2-CD set as nothing like it has been heard since Gregor Benko produced his acclaimed Landmarks of Recorded Pianism LP forty years ago.

This 60 disc box set contains 60 original 'Living Stereo' recordings. This is the first time a comprehensive collection of these iconic recordings has been created. Each album comes complete with its original LP artwork. An extensive booklet is included with the liner notes from each original album. Includes recordings by such great artists as Jascha Heifetz, Charles Munch, Fritz Reiner, Julian Bream, Leontyne Price and Arthur Rubinstein.