Théâtre Des Champs Élysées

Michel Petrucciani worked long and hard to come up with some of the extensive medleys heard in this brilliant solo piano concert, Au Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Much like the intriguing medley "Potpourri" heard on his American debut (100 Hearts), Petrucciani blends a number of recurring themes into a smoldering performance; the 40-plus-minute opening medley includes numerous songs, including "Maiden Voyage," "On Green Dolphin Street" and more. A breakaway run through Monk's "I Mean You" unfolds into a very dramatic arrangement of "'Round About Midnight." His original waltz "Even Mice Dance" is segued into a startling virtuoso adaptation of "Caravan." Two original ballads, "Night Sun in Blois" and "Love Letter," add to the rich texture of this live date.

LA VOIX DES RÊVES - Greatest Moments in Concert” (available on DVD & Blu Ray) features video footage from a number of occasions and venues – including items from a concert given among the crystal chandeliers of the splendid Galerie des Glaces in the palace of Versailles, and works by Handel and Vivaldi performed in another jewel of French Baroque architecture, the sumptuously decorated Chapelle de la Trinité in Lyon.

Today’s personality-cult pianists could, if they chose, learn a tremendous amount from these performances. Clara Haskil’s 1960 Paris recordings of Mozart’s two minor-key piano concertos, Nos. 20 (D minor) and 24 (C minor), have patrician nobility with no scene-stealing heroics. Both performances, incidentally, have been widely circulated, appearing most recently in the “Great Pianists of the 20th Century” series. This leaves concertos 9 and 19, and some shrewdly judged Scarlatti sonatas still out in the cold, but somehow I doubt that this reissue will signal any wider rehabilitation of Haskil’s discographic legacy.