Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke - The Dance in the Village Inn, after lenau)

With bonus DVD: A Faustian Dream - A Short Film Concept by Khatia Buniatishvili

The new Rubinstein 2CD album after the great success of "Best of Chopin by Arthur Rubinstein" with more than 10,500 units sold.

A selection of the most popular Liszt works played by the aristocrat of the piano.

Seen by millions on TV worldwide, the Wiener Philharmoniker’s New Year's Concert from Vienna is one of the best-known classical events in the world. - A perennial best-seller with 102,000 CDs and 45,000 DVDs sold in 2010.

The New Year's Concert, presented in the glittering Musikverein, features a charming programme that offers perennial favourites alongside some intriguing Strauss premieres. The complete programme will be announced beginning of November.

The 2011 concert will be conducted by Austrian-born Franz Welser-Möst - newly installed as the music director of the Vienna State Opera and a favourite with Viennese concertgoers.

Recorded live at the Dvorák Hall of the Rudolfinum, Prague, on March 31, 2001 (Brahms) and on March 22, 2008 (Liszt). New recording / Live

Following the series of four CDs featuring Smetana piano works (Supraphon SU3841-44), the ebullient pianist and buttress of the highly acclaimed Smetana Trio, Jitka Cechová, decided to “take up the gauntlet” with a live concert recording, which deprives the performer of the comfort of detailed corrections in the studio. Owing to their sheer difficulty, Brahms’ and Liszt’s compositions are a great challenge for any renowned pianist.

The third (and final) sonata created by the 20-year-old Brahms and the one and only sonata by the 42-yearold Liszt originated in the very same year. Whereas the former met with a significant response, the latter had to struggle for more than half a century to gain a firm foothold in concert programmes. Today, both of the pieces are deservedly ranked among the apexes of Romantic piano music.

In Jitka Cechová’s masterful and inspired interpretation, enhanced by the splendid acoustics of Prague’s Rudolfinum, the recording is a truly fantastic experience.

Philippe Graffin is the latest violinist to join ONYX, after several outstanding discs of rare French and English repertoire for labels such as Hyperion and Avie. This new recital brings together the mesmerising intensity of Gypsy violin playing with classical composers’ response to it.

Released to coincide with a notable novel called Hungarian Dances by writer and journalist Jessica Duchen. She explains: “When I asked Philippe Graffin, a treasured friend and colleague, to check the manuscript of Hungarian Dances for violinistic errors, I little dreamed he’d respond by making this recording: a CD inspired by the novel. Yet the novel was partly inspired by a CD – Philippe and Claire’s beautiful recital ‘In the Shade of Forests’, [Avie Records, rave reviews worldwide] evoking the spirit of the archetypal wandering Gypsy violinist”.

Philippe’s recital is loosely based around the book but is also designed to work as a programme in its own right with several pieces chosen only for the recording including rarities by such composers as Von Vecsey, Hubay, Scarlatescu and Arthur Hartmann.

Claire Désert is well-known in France for several solo CDs for FNAC and other labels and here plays both piano and piano luthéal, the ‘prepared piano’ that Ravel had made for Tzigane in 1919 and which imitates the sound of a Hungarian cimbalom to striking effect in many of these pieces.