Remastered

The 1993 album ‘Very’ was a number one record for Pet Shop Boys in the UK, and has to date sold in excess of five million copies worldwide. It contains 5 singles, including their cover of ‘Go West’ – a number 2 hit for PSB – and lead single ‘Can You Forgive Her?’.

Winner of the Leeds Piano Competition at the age of just twenty, Rafael Orozco exemplified a new generation of virtuoso pianists who favoured musical expression over spectacular display. His Chopin interpretations were truly revelatory, finding poetry not only in the Préludes but also in the Études. Remastered from the original tapes in 24-bit, this double album captures the rare occurrence of a Spanish pianist tackling two all-encompassing collections in which the essence of Romanticism is distilled – a precious souvenir of the impeccable artistry of a star of late twentieth-century pianism.

Édith Piaf is almost universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Still revered as an icon decades after her death, "The Sparrow" served as a touchstone for virtually every chansonnier, male or female, who followed her. Her greatest strength wasn't so much her technique, or the purity of her voice, but the raw, passionate power of her singing. (Given her extraordinarily petite size, audiences marveled all the more at the force of her vocals.) Her style epitomized that of the classic French chanson: highly emotional, even melodramatic, with a wide, rapid vibrato that wrung every last drop of sentiment from a lyric. She preferred melancholy, mournful material, singing about heartache, tragedy, poverty, and the harsh reality of life on the streets; much of it was based to some degree on her real-life experiences, written specifically for her by an ever-shifting cast of songwriters.