Joao Selva Chuva

The Portuguese pianist Maria Joa?o Pires has long been associated with the music of Mozart. Her delicacy of touch, vibrancy of phrasing and sense of fantasy mark her out as one of the elect who can touch his keyboard music without coarsening or sim- plifying it. She has made two complete cycles of the sonatas; reissued here is the first one, from the days in the 1970s when she first appeared on the international scene and won over listeners with a graceful purity of approach that left more famous names trailing in her wake.The later cycle brought added refinement, but anyone who is captivated by this still undervalued corpus – too difficult for beginners, yet scorned by many professionals in search of gaudier glories – will want to hear this set.

A wonderful live set from Joao Gilberto - very intimate, with a spare, stripped down quality that shows him at his best! The album features Joao on acoustic guitar and vocals - with no other backing, holding up a wealth of emotion and fragile beauty with a few simple moves of his hand and voice, in that incredible way that few other bossa players ever managed to match!

A wonderful live set from Joao Gilberto - very intimate, with a spare, stripped down quality that shows him at his best! The album features Joao on acoustic guitar and vocals - with no other backing, holding up a wealth of emotion and fragile beauty with a few simple moves of his hand and voice, in that incredible way that few other bossa players ever managed to match!

Maria João Pires “shapes and colours every phrase, and with immaculate taste, and she makes sure the phrases end as eloquently as they begin,” wrote Gramophone in 1974. “She conveys not just the details but the relevance of every note to the whole … Best of all, she communicates everything she has discovered about the music, and it is worth having.” This Portuguese pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, Pires was one of the artists who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 5-CD box gathers together the recordings she made over the period from 1976 to 1985 and it reflects the consistent focus of her repertoire, with its special emphasis on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets and concertos, it contains works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, but also by Bach and Chopin.

Two of the influential João Gilberto's LPs (Amoroso and Brasil) are combined on this single CD. The former session is pretty definitive with Gilberto interpreting four of Antonio Carlos Jobim's compositions (including "Wave" and "Triste") and four other songs (highlighted by "Besame Mucho," "Estate," and an odd 31-bar rendition of "'S Wonderful"). The strings (arranged by Claus Ogerman) are unnecessary but Gilberto proves to be in prime form. The later album also has its moments of interest (including a Brazilian version of "All of Me") and finds Gilberto backed by Johnny Mandel arrangements and assisted by singers Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Maria Bethania. Overall there is not much variety throughout this gently swinging program but these are a pair of Gilberto's better post-1970 recordings.

João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira was released in 1980 by João Gilberto. It was recorded in 1980 live on TV Globo. In English, that would be his entire Brazilian ancestral last name written on his studio album.