Franz Peter Schubert

The London String Quartet was Britain’s leading chamber ensemble for two decades and 2010 marked the centenary of its first concerts. Equally well known in America, this collection includes five programmes performed at the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1951, issued here for the first time. The collection includes well known works, as well as more obscure ones by Bridge, Kreisler and Foster.

A welcome return to the catalogue for András Schiff''s highly-acclaimed cycle of Schubert Sonatas. This reissue now includes the composer's much-loved Impromptus and Moments musicaux as well as other pieces. The booklet contains a new essay on Schubert's piano music and Schiff''s recordings by piano expert Jeremy Siepmann.

This is the debut solo recording by the internationally renowned bass David Soar, featuring a selection of rarely-heard songs by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Purcell and Frederick Keel together with arias by Mozart and Schubert.

David Soar is a former Principal Artist at Welsh National Opera and in 2011, made his Royal Opera House, Covent Garden debut alongside Angela Gheorghiu in Adriana Lecouvreur and his Glyndebourne Festival Opera debut in Don Giovanni. In the 2012-13 season, Soar will make his Metropolitan Opera debut.

David Soar is joined by the award-winning accompanist, James Southall.

The conductor Leo Blech and the pianist Julian von Károlyi, whose live performance of the Chopin Second Piano Concerto given at the Berlin Titania Palast in 1950 is documented on this CD, are nowadays ranked amongst the greatest but unjustly forgotten interpreters of the 20th century. Blech, whose sophisticated mature reading of Schubert’s Symphony in C major, The Great can also be admired on this recording, had been a leading German conductor since 1908 until he was pushed out of his post by the Nazis in 1937, due to his Jewish faith, and was forced to emigrate. Károlyi, a leading pianist of his generation in the 1950s, was later accused of being routine-driven. His masterful Chopin interpretation demonstrates, however, that his ability to combine musicianship and virtuosity is exemplary even today.

The Anthology of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is a transcription in sound of the concert-giving history of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, based upon radio recordings from the archives of Dutch Radio and Radio Netherlands World Service. Six decades of the 20th century are put under the spotlight in six boxes, each containing 14 CDs. The RCO have chosen not only legendary performances by chief conductors of the Orchestra but also concerts led by countless guest conductors of both greater and lesser renown. Famous soloists make their debuts alongside world premieres of works that have since become classics of the repertoire.

This sixth volume of the Anthology features the radio recordings made by the orchestra in the 1990s, presenting an overview on 14 CDs of the orchestra’s artistic development under various conductors during that period.

The RCO will celebrate their 125th anniversary in 2013, when Volume 7 will be issued and limited print runs of the early volumes.

This set is this first in a new APR series featuring pupils of the great British piano teacher, Tobias Matthay.

TOBIAS MATTHAY (1858–1945) is the greatest piano teacher Britain has produced. From the 1890s to the 1930s, first at the RAM and then also at his own school, he almost singlehandedly produced a generation of concert pianists who launched an English piano tradition. York Bowen was an early pupil, but those best remembered are a group of female pianists; Harriet Cohen, Myra Hess, Irene Scharrer and Moura Lympany, all of whom will feature in this APR series.

EILEEN JOYCE lies somewhat outside this mainstream, as she trained principally in Germany, but she did have three years of finishing studies with Matthay between 1930 and 1933.

Eileen Joyce was born in Tasmania in 1908 to poor immigrants of Irish descent. Her father was an itinerant labourer and the family soon moved to Western Australia where the young Eileen discovered the piano and, in spite of much hardship, soon developed an astonishing playing ability. Heard by Grainger and Backhaus, who both praised her, she was sent off to Germany where she studied for three years with Robert Teichmüller. She came to England in 1930 with a recommendation which led to her Proms debut in that year playing Prokofiev's Third Concerto. She also commenced her advanced studies with Matthay.

After a slow start, her career blossomed exponentially from 1933 when she made her first recording. This disc, of Paul de Schlözer's Etude Op1/2 and Liszt's La Leggierezza is still regarded as one of the most astonishing examples of virtuosity ever recorded.

From this time until 1960, when she suddenly retired from performing at the age of 52, she was one of Britain's best loved pianists.

She appeared 37 times at the Proms, gave the British premieres of both Shostakovich concertos and became known to millions as the pianist playing Rachmaninov's Second Concerto in the film 'Brief Encounter'. Her greatest recordings are from the 78rpm period and we present all of these, with the exception of her concerto performances and a few later Decca discs. Eileen was a natural pianist with a big rich sound and very fast fingers; she is at her best in the many brilliant encore type pieces she recorded but she was equally stylish (and brilliant) in Mozart and had a special affinity with the wistful nostalgia of Grieg.

Most of these recordings have never been transferred to CD before so this set is a 'must' for all enthusiasts of great piano playing from the past.

Shai Wosner’s second release for ONYX after his critically acclaimed Brahms and Schoenberg debut disc (ONYX4055) of 2010. For his all Schubert programme Wosner has chosen two late sonatas. The monumental but unfinished two-movement torso D840, and the genial D850 written at a time in the composers life when he was without money, out of love, and involved with rows with his publishers. This work was one of the few sonatas to be published during his lifetime, and finally he earned 300 florins. Schumann described this sonata as ‘impetuous, overflowing’ It is one of Schubert’s happiest works, in start contrast to the stark and monolithic D840.

One of the greatest musical artists of modern Turkey, Gülsin Onay is an exceptional phenomenon, and Sono Luminus is excited to release her latest project, Liszt, Haydn, Schubert. Listeners will marvel at the kaleidoscopic range of colours she can produce from the instrument, with her unique touch in which even the least important, fleeting note has its own special meaning.

Gülsin Onay excels both in recital and in concerto, playing alongside many leading orchestras - among them the Philharmonia, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, Wiener Symphoniker, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Copenhagen and Helsinki, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic - and conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenzy, Erich Bergel, Michael Boder, Andrey Boreyko, Jörg Faerber, Edward Gardner, Emmanuel Krivine, Ingo Metzmacher, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jose Serebrier, Vassily Sinaisky and Stanislaw Wislocki.

Gülsin Onay also appears as a guest at major festivals around the world, including Berlin, Warsaw, Granada, Mozartfest Würzburg, Newport, Miami, Schleswig-Holstein and Istanbul.

A natural soloist, Gülsin Onay is equally at home with music of all periods and styles: her repertoire ranges from Bach and Scarlatti to the contemporary, taking in the great classical and romantic works of the 19th and 20th centuries. She has championed the music of the contemporary Turkish composer A. Adnan Saygun, whose 2nd Piano Concerto was dedicated to her. Other contemporary composers who have dedicated works to Gülsin Onay are Hubert Stuppner, Denis Dufour, Jean-Louis Petit, Muhiddin Dürrüoglu-Demiriz and Marc-André Hamelin. Her recordings illustrate the breadth of her repertoire: concertos by Mozart, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Stuppner, and both concertos by Saygun; solo music by Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Franck, Medtner, Ravel, Bartók, Busoni and Saygun; and two live concert DVDs, featuring a critically-acclaimed recital at the Miami festival, and concertos by Grieg and Saint-Saëns. Forthcoming releases include the concertos by Khachaturian and Ulvi Cemal Erkin, with Jose Serebrier and the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra.

This release of live and studio recordings features some of Mieczyslaw Horszowski‘s very rare chamber music performances based on original LPs which have been generously offered by Mrs. Horszowski.