The Japanese company, BMG Japan, sorted the original RCA RED SEAL CDs according to the composers and the year when the music pieces were created. BEST100 series are the best representative CDs, which were carefully chosen from those music pieces by acting and recording, and they were released again with the mark of RCA BEST100. These CDs are the most impressive records in the classical field at RCA’s best. Theoretically, we could find the single originals of those CDs, but BMG Japan reorganised excellently for everyone. During BMG Japan period, it was released for the first time in 1999 and for the second time in 2008 after SONY took over BMG. BEST100 series belong to the latter.
This lavish box set contains a whopping 68 discs, a hardcover book, and five DVDs; in short, it's Murray Perahia's entire recorded career through 2010. Although the title says "The First 40 Years," the final disc in the set is a Vox Turnabout disc of Mozart chamber music that Perahia recorded with Boris Kroyt and Harold Wright in 1967, but not released until 1976. Chamber music is not something Perahia is usually known for, nor is vocal music.
The search for "the" solo instrument of the 19th century leads inevitably to the piano. It has its place in the public concert hall as well as in the private salon, and not a few composers have emerged as successful pianists. Among the composers in this program, though, only Frédéric Chopin belongs to this group, but he soon changed his field of activity from the anonymous concert hall to the more intimate salon circle. Antonìn Dvorák, on the other hand, passed the organists' examination and was at first employed as violist in an orchestra, while Tchaikovsky was much too reclusive to interpret his own works in front of an audience. Among the selected works by Dvorák, Chopin and Tchaikovsky, only the Dvorák piano concerto requires a large concert hall, while the solo pieces by Chopin and Tchaikovsky were originally at home in the salon…
In their very first recording together, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin render Frédéric Chopin’s concertos for piano and orchestra, two vibrant and poetic works that the composer wrote in his early 20s.
With her refined, honest artistry, the Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires - who turns 70 in July 2014 - is one of the musicians who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 17-CD box presents all the recordings she made between 1972 and 1987. Reflecting the consistent focus of her repertoire, this box set's emphasis is on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets, and concertos, this release contains works by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven, as well as by Bach and Chopin.
A special limited-edition 50 CD set of the world's favourite piano concertos, sonatas and other solo pieces. A host of famous pianists perform music from J.S.Bach to Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Gershwin. This collection of discs includes the five Beethoven Concertos, three Rachmaninov Concertos as well as concertos by Brahms, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Schumann and Ravel as well as six Mozart Concertos.
Decca’s first FFRR concerto recording available for the first time: Eileen Joyce / Tchaikovsky 2nd Piano Concerto – never released on 78rpm and long thought lost, the test pressings were recently found at the International Piano Archives in Maryland.
La Discotheque Ideale Classique brings together the masterpieces of 47 composers (Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Ravel, Wagner …) performed by the greatest artists of the prestigious Erato-Warner Classics catalog. The 100 CDs of the box, which contain more than 100 hours of listening, allow you to rediscover the essential works of the classical repertoire.
Chopin’s Piano Concertos are works of a twenty year old composer and ambitious soloist. Powerful and challenging, their romantic dimension also carries sensitive effusions. This duality is highlighted here by an interpretation on period instruments in a chamber version.