L.k. Brass

It may be rash to claim that the French pianist Monique Haas (1909-1987) never made a bad recording, but you won't find one among her complete DG sessions. Dating from the late 1940s up to 1965, the recordings have been transferred from scratch, and they sound remarkably well for their respective vintages. The repertoire is diverse and unhackneyed, ranging from Mozart piano duets (with Heinz Schröter) and K. 449 and K. 488 concertos, rare Haydn gems (the E-flat Arietta with Variations and the Fantasia in C major), and the Stravinsky Capriccio, to Hindemith's Concert Music for piano, brass and harps (with the composer conducting), and a substantial sonata by Marcel Mihalovici (the pianist's husband) featuring violinist Max Rostal.

In the golden age of orchestral recording – the 1950s cusp between mono and stereo – American labels piled into London and Vienna after an aggressive union priced their own musicians out of work. At Abbey Road, players worked 30 days on the trot, three sessions a day, to feed a burgeoning market for classical music. In Vienna, the Philharmonic (exclusively contracted to Decca) performed under six different names for other labels.

Few record labels can boast as glorious a legacy as Sony Classical. This lavish four-disc set chronicles the finest performances available on the label from the past ninety-five years. Eighty selections comprising over four hours of music are accompanied by two lavishly illustrated booklets highlighting Sony Classical's stellar history.

Steinway & Sons, for over 150 years the maker of the world's finest pianos and the symbol of quality and excellence to generations, joins forces with Universal Classics, home to history's greatest pianists on the Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and Philips labels, to present the Steinway Legends Grand Edition, an impressive box that holds all 10 Steinway Legends packages in the series in a unique "Steinway Series D" Piano Box.