The Romantic Piano Concerto 79

This Naxos CD was recorded in March 1995 in the Concert Hall in Katowice and contains a very good performance of that old warhorse, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op.23. The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra sound just great thanks to the producer Günter Appenheimer and, particularly, conductor Antoni Wit. Pianist Bernd Glemser has plenty of fire when needed coupled with delicacy as appropriate. It's a really good performance.

2013 limited edition 100 CD box set on the premiere classical label Deutsch Grammophon. Subtitled from Gregorian Chant to Gorecki.
• It starts with Gregorian Chant and Machaut chansons and ends with Gorecki and the Minimalists.
• The greatest composers have as many as five CDs devoted to them (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven);
• 20th-century music is well represented with no fewer than 20 CDs.
• Operas and major choral works are represented by highlights, but otherwise the edition presents, as far as possible, only complete works throughout.
• Altogether, there are more than 80 composers in the set, with over 400 works for a total of around 120 hours of music.

Carl Maria von Weber wrote music that has been admired by composers as diverse as Schumann, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. But in his lifetime he was also recognised as one of the finest pianists of the period, with an exceptional technique and a brilliant gift for improvisation.

The Van Cliburn Complete Album Collection brings together, for the first time, all of the live and studio recordings the legendary pianist made for RCA. Beginning with his 1958 debut recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1, the Complete Album Collection features his personal selections of favorite Chopin, Brahms and Debussy pieces, selections from his 1972 Moscow performances, his popular album of Favorite Encores plus his last recording for RCA of Brahms pieces.

Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991), one of the great piano masters, receives an exceptional tribute from the label with which he was most closely associated. This is a beautiful, limited-edition 35-CD box of Kempff’s complete solo repertoire on DG and Decca Classics. It includes the stereo Beethoven sonata cycle, the Schubert sonata cycle, generous anthologies of Bach, Brahms, Liszt, Schubert, and Schumann – plus Chopin and Baroque. There are many rarities, not readily available at present.