Claude Achille Debussy

Following the critical acclaim of his recent recordings of rare Russian concertos, Oleg Marshev turns his attention to French repertoire. This release features three of the best-known works for piano and orchestra from composers of French or nearby origin (Franck born in Belgium). The showpiece of the release is Ravel’s Concerto for piano and orchestra but the outsider is surely Debussy’s Fantaisie, an attractive rarely played piece.

Debussy, La Mer, Images… this is hardly the first time that a disc has been devoted to them! But when one of the most highly-ranked conductors in France is at the head of the ‘Frenchest’ of non-French orchestras and the result is an in depth interpretation, brimming with vigour, then everyone should take note.

‘Emmanuel Krivine is one of today’s greatest conductors’ The Guardian

This imaginative programme features pieces by composers who were contemporaries of Picasso and includes works by Poulenc, Albéniz, Granados, Stravinsky and Debussy. The first piece is a setting of an Éluard poem called Pablo Picasso by Poulenc.

2 CDs for the price of 1.

Michael Zadora is one of the most obscure pianists to have recorded prolifically in the 78rpm era. Only a handful of 78s have ever been reissued, and no LP or CD has ever been devoted to him. It would appear that his concert career was also not particularly high profile, yet from these recordings it seems he was a very significant artist. Perhaps the answer lies in his background. He was born in the New York of aristocratic Polish parents but returned to Europe to study and was a pupil of Leshetizky and Barth (who also taught Rubinstein). After the First World War he became a disciple of Busoni and indeed played for the great artist on his deathbed. Zadora seems to have been a rather reserved character, much more an intellectual than someone who enjoyed public performance and it is likely that family wealth allowed him the luxury of not have to pursue his career too aggressively. On the other hand, studio recording suited him very well indeed and he seems equally at home in the standard repertoire, such as Chopin, and in more rarefied material, such as the Busoni Sonatinas, where we are undoubtedly hearing an interpretation very close to that of the composer himself. Of particular interest are Zadora's own unusual transcriptions and also the works of 'Pietro Amadis' who was actually a pseudonym of the pianist.

These very rare recordings should be of particular interest to all lovers of historic piano playing.

This is Vol.22 of the Edition Ruhr Piano Festival and features outstanding young pianists giving their debut recital.

In 1958 Pierre Fournier made his belated Festival début, at the Mozarteum, in a recital accompanied by the pianist Franz Holetschek. In the process he confirmed his reputation as the 'aristocrat of the cello', magisterially rising to the challenges of his chosen programme. It is no wonder, then, that in the wake of his brilliant début, Fournier was from then on a welcome visitor to the Salzburg Festival.

The public image of Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) is divided: for some, he is one of the most important Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century, whereas others perceive him as an enfant terrible whose battle against the cultural establishment and the constraints of the music business, which limited his multifaceted artistic interests and talents, became legendary.As ever, such generalisations are both true and false. This compilation of hitherto unreleased recordings made by Gulda for the RIAS Berlin between 1950 and 1959 enables us to experience the pianist and musician Gulda in a more differentiated and unprejudiced manner. For even here, the 'complete musician' - as Gulda saw himself throughout his career - comes into view.The spectrum of recordings which, given the almost frightening concert and recording activities Gulda tackled during this decade, only represents the tip of the iceberg, speaks for itself: it stretches from Mozart to Prokofiev and shows Gulda to be a universal artist who, from the beginning, sought to combine the highest possible degree of objectivity and authenticity with the greatest intensity of music-making. Gulda's musical and pianistic foundations had been laid in Vienna by his teacher Bruno Seidlhofer, who had formed nearly all the important pianists of the 'Viennese School'; the quality of Gulda's training was confirmed by his being awarded the first prize at the Geneva Piano Competition in 1946 which Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli had won before him. Gulda looked for role models who displayed a spontaneous and at the same time controlled intensity in their playing, and he found them in American Jazz, whose inexorable rise in post-war Europe was to fascinate him throughout his career. The early Mozart and Beethoven recordings, made in 1950, demonstrate Gulda's phenomenal analytical understanding of compositional structures and his unerring sense of rhythm and touch. His Chopin and Ravel recordings are sensational: on the highest pianistic level, Chopin's Prélude Op. 28 and Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit are presented in a rare, incisive manner on both a musical and dramatic level.With his interpretation of two important early works by Debussy, the Suite pour le Piano and the Suite bergamasque, as well as a selection of the Préludes, Gulda also proves to be one of the few non-French pianists who found a decidedly modern and yet authentic access to these masterworks.The programme closes with single pieces by Chopin (Nocturne in C minor,Op. 48 No. 1 and Berceuse Op. 60), demonstrating Gulda's intensive exploration of romantic works, as well as a spectacular recording of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7 Op. 83, made in 1950. Prokofiev's music, whose wildness in the end proved incompatible with Gulda, did not remain in his repertoire for long; he did, however, pass on important impulses to his most famous pupil, Martha Argerich.