Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 2 Scottish National Orchestra

Moscow-born pianist Boris Giltburg has made quite a name for himself in the big Russian piano classics. His Rachmaninoff Second was very fine and the vaunted “Rach 3” is no less impressive. He has the temperament and the technique for this mighty work and squares up to its scale and ambition with great panache. Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto draws some high-powered yet elegant playing from the Scottish orchestra. The Corelli Variations of 1931, the composer’s last solo work, is an altogether cooler creation—less heart-on-sleeve but equally entrancing. Giltburg scales back and plays it with terrific confidence.

French pianist Jonathan Fournelm, 27, has won this year’s Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition. Second Prize was awarded to Rusian pianist Sergei Redkin and third Prize to Keigo Mukawa (Japan).

In 2017, Naxos Records celebrates its 30th anniversary. Founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, the label now boasts a catalogue of over 9,000 albums spanning every genre of classical music. This limited edition anniversary boxed set comprises thirty CDs spanning the wide range of the label's repertoire. Featuring releases from 1987 to 2016 and a host of stellar artists, every one of these discs has received critical acclaim and has contributed towards the huge success of Naxos: the world's largest independent classical record label. Naxos was launched in 1987 as a budget classical CD label, offering CDs at teh price of an LP when CDs cost about three times more than LPs.

Acclaimed pianist and organist Jae-Hyuck Cho is one of the most active concert artists in Korea. He has been described as “a musician who is nearing perfection with an extraordinary breadth of expression, flawless technique, and composition, sensitivity, and intelligence, insightful and detailed playing without exaggeration.”