Brahms: Intermezzo in C major, Op. 119 No. 3

As an eleven-year-old in 1895, Wilhelm Backhaus met and performed for D'Albert, Grieg, Nikisch and Brahms, among others. Here was a pianist who shunned hectoring gestures of the late Romantic era for economy and purposefulness. "His facial expression always remained steady, showing an unceasing concentration on the sounds his hands were coaxing from the instrument with such concentrated energy. Everything lay in the act of playing, just as the preoccupation of a great painter or sculptor would be not with technique as such, but with craftsmanship - that is, skill not as an end in itself, but as a vehicle for the idea - giving pleasure to those who were able to watch and hear how a true master would execute even difficult passages effortlessly," writes Walter Frei. This 2-CD set brings together Backhaus's recordings with Karl Bohm and the Vienna Philharmonic of the two Brahms Piano Concertos - the first recorded in 1953, the second in 1967 shortly after the pianist's 83rd birthday! They are coupled with a generous selection of the composer's piano pieces, performed with the same nobility and breadth.

2012 sees the 70th birthday of Daniel Barenboim, surely one of the greatest of all living musicians as pianist and conductor. He began what has grown into his vast recording career as a young teenager, with these recordings, first issued in the early months of 1956, when the boy pianist was just 13 years old. They are beautiful performances of a wide range of music, from Bach to Shostakovich, and we are pleased to present this complete collection of Daniel Barenboim's first-ever recordings as a memento of his gilded youth - recordings which have not been available now in any form for more than 40 years - and which all admirers of this great artists will wish to possess.

Blessed with an almost frightening talent, Hélène Grimaud is a woman of strong ideals, immense energy and exceptional tenacity. As a pianist she often divides her audience, for hers Is no usual approach to the piano repertoire. Grimaud plays from the gut, with scant regard for convention, rules or reverence. Listening to her can often make one question one’s preconceptions about a work, since she has a unique way of approaching even the most familiar pieces from an unexpected, personal perspective. Whether or not the critics approve, the process is constantly creative and the results are always compelling at a deep, psychological level, attracting a cult following worldwide. The present collection represents a retrospective survey of some of her finest earlier recordings, made between 1995 and 2000.

Arthur Rubinstein, Dame Myra Hess and Vladimir de Pachmann are among the great pianists featured on these piano roll recordings. Made between 1905 and 1925 these are truly historical documents, captured in the extraordinary sound of the piano roll to give us fresh and modern sounding performances.

There is no substitute for the wisdom of age and experience. Earl Wild, the legendary 86-year-old Grammy Award-winning virtuoso pianist, in a new recording of Brahms. "Of the great many recordings of Brahms' monumental Sonata No. 3 that I have heard, Earl Wild's is far and away the most fully realized, the most musically satisfying, and the most breathtaking. His performance is simultaneously spacious and taut, orchestrally textured and utterly transparent, sweeping in feel and elegantly detailed. Wild's command of the Sonata is so complete and his playing (even at 86) so brilliantly captures its expansive tonal palette, volatile drama and its exquisite poetry, we are apt to forget that Brahms' writing teems with technical difficulties. Wild's Paganini Variations have irresistible flair - they are as brilliant musically as they are technically. The recording as a whole is unsurpassable."