Dee j Brahms

Russia is vast, and so is this 25-disc tribute to the great piano school of Russia-from the long-famous icons to the more recent inheritors of this ineffably proud tradition. Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lazar Berman and many others display their subtly various approaches to phrasing and timbre as they perform the great works of the Russian canon and composers across Europe.

These Parisian café tunes bring out the best in this stellar jazz singer, particularly on the opening title track. Accompanied by accordion, which introduces the song, Dee Dee Bridgewater takes you from Paris down to the French Riviera with a warm, slightly island sound as she sings en français. And she has no problem creating her soothing jazz pipes regardless of language. It's as if she's been influenced by the greats but also by the late Henry Mancini in terms of some of the arrangements. A cover of "La Mer (Beyond the Sea)" is a faster, up-tempo approach far different than the swinging version by Bobby Darin.

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.

This beautiful new CD by the outstanding organist Heinrich Walther contains, in addition to works by Johann Sebastian Bach, a selection of lesser-known and rarely played compositions from the Romantic and Late Romantic periods. These include three of the Eleven Chorale Preludes op 122 by Johannes Brahms as well as his Prelude and Fugue in G minor WoO 10. And by José María Usandizaga the first movement “Andante” from the Fantasia for cello and orchestra (1908) in the one written by Heinrich Walther himself in 2022 written organ version, an artist who loves the music he performs and unspectacularly delves into each of the works before him.

There are two principal reasons to try this disc. The first is to hear an attempted reconstruction of Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, as a string quintet. Accomplished by Sebastian Brown in 1946, Brahms' rescored and recasted quintet makes a fine work for strings, it's heroic piano part gone but its loss compensated for by the smoothness of the sonority. The second is to hear a work that's never been recorded before – Joseph Miroslav Weber's String Quintet in D major from 1898.