Horszowski

The Horszowski Trio, named for the late, legendary pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski, debuts on AVIE with impassioned accounts of Robert Schumann’s Complete Piano Trios.

We are accustomed to looking to Pearl for gems from the past, and these transfers from previously unpublished live recordings of the 70-year-old Horszowski's Mozart, complete with crackles, muffed notes and coughing fits aplenty, do indeed sound as if they come from the dark backward and abysm of time. They date, in fact, only from 1962-72: near contemporaries of Barenboim's Mozart concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra. These performances, though, were taken from radio tapes and from a disc-cutting machine fed directly by the microphones in the Metropolitan Museum of Art where this concert series was held. They are alive with all the spontaneous enthusiasm of music-making which involved no record companies, no editing and no public relations.

Spanish cellist Pablo Casals ceased performing in 1946 to protest the world's indifference to the oppressive Franco regime then in power in his homeland. The silence of the cellist, then in his 70s, was keenly felt by the millions who loved him. When he returned to concertizing in 1950, at first it was only to honor Bach, who had died two hundred years before. Violinist Alexander Schneider (of the Budapest Quartet) was integral in coaxing Casals out of his silence and in planning what became known as the Prades Bach Festival.

This is the first-ever collection of Rudolf Serkin's complete recordings for Columbia Masterworks on 75 discs: Concertos, sonatas, chamber music and vocal performances, all recorded between 1941 and 1985. An all-embracing survey of Rudolf Serkin's recorded achievements, spanning over 44 years. Some collaborations include Adolf Busch, Pablo Casals, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, Frtiz Reiner, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, and Arturo Toscanini.

Paavali Jumppanen is an internationally esteemed pianist, with a vast performance repertoire spanning from Bach to the Avant-garde. Jumppanen’s performances of the complete cycles of Beethoven’s and Mozart’s Piano Sonatas as well as Beethoven’s concertos and chamber music have won critical acclaim. Jumppanen has collaborated with numerous contemporary composers and has premiered many solo and chamber works for the piano. Of particular note are his recordings of Pierre Boulez’s complete piano sonatas at the request of the composer. This adaptability between musical genres gives a fresh reading of the core classical piano repertoire.