Final Fantasie

Mily Balakirev learned his craft from local musicians. Conductor Karl Eisrich introduced Balakirev to the music of Chopin, Glinka, and Alexander Ulybyshev, a music loving landowner who maintained a vast library of musical scores. In 1855, Balakirev composed his Piano Fantasia on Themes from Glinka's a Life for the Tsar, and Ulybyshev took Balakirev to St. Petersburg to meet Glinka himself. Glinka appreciated Balakirev's talent, and offered advice and encouragement. Balakirev enjoyed a brilliant debut as a pianist in St. Petersburg, and in 1858 performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in the presence of the Tsar. In April 1858, Balakirev fell ill with "brain fever"; although he recovered, he would suffer from lifelong headaches, nervousness, and depression. With the deaths of both Glinka and Ulybyshev, Balakirev decided to carry on their ideas ………..

from Allmusic

Vladimir Horowitz – The Complete Original Jacket Collection is a 70 CD boxed set featuring most of the recordings of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. The collection contains recordings from 1928 to his final recording session just four days before his death in 1989.

Alexander Scriabin, whose 150th anniversary we celebrated in 2022, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, one year his junior, were rivals at the Moscow Conservatory as students in both piano and composition. At the piano final exam in 1891, Rachmaninoff was awarded first prize and Scriabin second – it’s fascinating just to imagine what this rivalry between music history’s most famous classmates had been like. Subsequently, they went their separate ways; in particular, Scriabin became drawn to Nietzsche’s Übermensch theory and Blavatsky’s theosophy and his musical style changed drastically, leading to his so-called music of mysticism with the heavy use of progressive harmonies.

Vladimir Horowitz – The Complete Original Jacket Collection is a 70 CD boxed set featuring most of the recordings of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. The collection contains recordings from 1928 to his final recording session just four days before his death in 1989. Horowitz's recordings for RCA Red Seal and Columbia Masterworks/Sony Classical are included in the set. Recordings that Horowitz made for RCA's European affiliate, HMV, are not included. Nor are the recordings he made with Deutsche Grammophon from 1985-1989. It is one of the largest issues in the Original Jacket Collection series, and supersedes two smaller Original Jacket issues of Horowitz material.

Subtitled "The criminal trombone No 2 ½" this is another release by two Swedish musicians, Christian Lindberg and Roland Pöntien. Previously issues by the pair have included "The Criminal Trombone" featuring 'stolen works' with Lindberg as 'defendant' and Pöntinen as 'accomplice'. This CD continues in a similar vein with comic illustrations and a spoof introduction.

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was nothing more than a stupendously talented violinist and a staggeringly inventive transcriber of other composers' music. And as this 2008 Hyperion recording by violinist Ilya Gringolts shows, that is more than enough to sustain his career during his lifetime and just enough to maintain his reputation after his death.