Franz Peter Schubert

Sviatoslav Richter represents the summit of pianistic achievement: his incredible virtuosity and strength, his vision of structure and form, the range of emotion he was able to express on his instrument in concert and on disc have never been surpassed.

Now, for the first time, all nine of the solo and concerto LP-recordings he made for Deutsche Grammophon have been gathered into a single box-set at budget price. All of these recordings have been in the DG catalogue since they were made; if they’re not still at top price, they’re in The Originals series.

It started in 1956 with a Schumann recital and ended in 1962 with a recital recorded live on tour in Italy. In between there were five concerto LPs (including Rachmaninov’s Second, Tchaikovsy’s First with Karajan, the Schumann and Prokofiev’s Fifth) and two more mixed recitals. Here they are, faithfully reproduced in their original couplings (newly mastered) and with original artwork in mini-LP format. The CD booklet (in the style of the The Martha Argerich Collection) has masterly new liner notes by piano expert Jeremy Siepmann, who manages to capture the essence of Richter the man and musician, as well as furnishing precise annotations on each of the albums in turn.

An essential box-set for all serious lovers of piano music.

With Die schöne Müllerin the singer has to free himself from the role of neutral observer and identify with the character of the traveller. Matthias Goerne is supreme in this repertoire, with the acute awareness that disappointment, melancholy and death wish are at the end of the road. The third volume in a Schubertian venture which has already created quite a stir.

Four Impromptus that look towards the sonata model, a sonata entitled 'Fantasie': it would appear that, in the works recorded here, Schubert was trying out all the possibilities of cyclic construction.These opened out before him new formal perspectives that would extend the conventional limits - just two years before his death.

Andreas Staier is renowned worldwide for his interpretation of classical and post-classical music on the historical fortepiano. His current repertoire includes works from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which he performs on both the harpsichord and the fortepiano. He is regularly invited to perform at leading music festivals as well as in the most prestigious concert halls worldwide. Andreas has recorded extensively and his recordings of Die Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin, accompanying Christoph Pregardien, have won many awards. Andreas Staier now records for harmonia mundi.

‘Russia is old, Russia is vast, Russia is mighty. But her advance in art, letters and music is comparatively recent’. So wrote Joseph Lhévinne in 1917. Mikhail, Glinka emerged along with Pushkin, Turgenev and Tolstoy in the early 1800s and was to become the father of Russian music. At the same time as Glinka was establishing himself as the first nationalistic composer of the nation, the first great pianist-composer settled in Moscow - the Irishman John Field. Field can lay claim to not only inventing the nocturne, but also to laying the foundation stone of what would become the great piano school of Russia. The latest students of this great tradition are very much with us today: Lugansky, Kissin and Demidenko can all be found in this set.

This remarkable 25CD survey of some of the great Russian pianists of past and present follows the tradition from those who can, through their teachers, trace a direct lineage to Clementi, Field, Beethoven, Czerny, Henselt and Liszt. The Rubinstein brothers Anton and Nikolai established the St Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories, and from the 1840s, Russia started to produce the first of the great virtuosos.

Great names such as Neuhaus and Horowitz are to be found in this set, as well as Richter, Gilels – both with three CDs each – Berman, Ashkenazy, Pletnev, Gavrilov and many more. Other names (Konstantin Igumnov, Viktor Merzhanov, Yakov Zak) may be less familiar to Western ears, but will offer fascinating perspectives on the developing school of Russian pianism, and the subtly various approaches to phrase and timbre within it.

The repertoire ranges from Russian warhorses such as the First Piano Concertos by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev to intimate salon pieces such as Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons, including rarely heard works such as Kabalevsky’s set of Preludes. The monumental concertos by Brahms, Beethoven and others are well represented, as are the litmus tests of Classical and Romantic piano literature: there are several contrasting versions of Liszt’s B minor Sonata and Beethoven’s Sonata No.32.

A fabulous survey of some of the greatest pianists of the past century and more to emerge from the great Russian tradition of piano playing and teaching. A must for all lovers of the piano.

Of historical interest – many recordings are rare, and have been hitherto been unavailable on CD.

Comprehensive booklet with detailed notes on every pianist and the recordings.

Martin Helmchen and Christian Tetzlaff lead a superb line-up of young musicians in these, some of the best loved, of all chamber works.

Imogen Cooper returns to AVIE with the first in a series of 3 double CDs, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, exploring the late piano music of Schubert written between 1823 and 1828. The first volume includes the A minor Sonata D845, the D major Sonata D850 and the A major Sonata D959.

Imogen says: “I’m not afraid of being described as a Schubert specialist,” even though her active repertoire ranges from Bach to Thomas Adès. “He has taken up a lot of my waking time for more than 30 years. In fact, you could say that his songs and his piano music have sometimes been close to an obsession for me.” It is more than 20 years since Cooper made a live and recorded survey of all the piano music Schubert composed from early 1823 until his death in 1828 at the age of 31. “One of the reasons I’ve taken it all up again is that I feel it ten times more strongly than I did 20 years ago: the message has become more direct to me. Schubert has become even more necessary to my well-being, and I sense strongly that he is important for an audience’s well-being too.

Imogen Cooper has established a reputation as one of the finest interpreters of the classical repertoire. Having spent several years at the Paris Conservatoire in her teens, Cooper went to Vienna to study with Paul Badura-Skoda, Jörg Demus and the pianist often seen as her mentor, Alfred Brendel. She has appeared with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle among many others.

“She is an outstanding artist, one of the finest pianists now playing.” Daily Telegraph