Rachmaninoff Edition 31CD
2008 | Classical | eac wv cue log covers | ~8GB
Brilliant Classics / 9013 Here is the most complete collection of Rachmaninoff ’s output ever assembled on disc: from the piano concertos and preludes of worldwide affection and esteem to his many songs and three operas, which are far less known but reveal the heart and soul of their creator, as a Russian first and foremost, whose attachment to his mother country never diminished in decades of homesick exile.
The performers on this set are drawn from both sides of that divide: Earl Wild plays the piano concertos, while the equally maverick conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky masterminds the symphonies.
The Borodin Trio plays the two impassioned piano trios, while another American virtuoso, Garrick Ohlsson, tackles the many transcriptions that the composer made of Chopin, Bach and others, with the major piano works (the sonatas, preludes and Etudes-tableaux) played by Santiago Rodriguez and Nikolai Lugansky.
There are also new recordings of early piano pieces made especially for this set and not previously released, and three discs of ‘historic’ performances. These feature a selection of piano concertos and solo works played by some of the great Rachmaninoff pianists of the past: Emil Gilels, Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter and, inevitably, the composer himself, whom many still consider to be the finest exponent of his own works. The set is completed by an extended introduction to the composer and his work by the Rachmaninoff authority Julian Haylock on a bonus CD-ROM.
• US market has a special 28-CD version of this box, 9071, from which the last three CDs of historical recordings are excluded for copyright reasons
Chopin Complete Edition 17 CD | EAC: APE + CUE + LOG | Book Scans HQ | 3.83 GB Classical | 2009 | Deutsche Grammophon Cataloge: 000289 477 8445 6
Frédéric François Chopin - 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849 was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist.He was one of the great masters of Romantic music.
Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a French-expatriate father and Polish mother and was regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. On 2 November 1830, at the age of twenty, he left Warsaw for Austria, intending to go on to Italy. The outbreak of the Polish November Uprising seven days later, and its subsequent suppression by Russia, led to Chopin's becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration. In Paris, Chopin made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. Though an ardent Polish patriot, in France he used the French versions of his names and eventually, to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents, became a French citizen. After some ill-fated romantic involvements with Polish women, from 1837 to 1847 he had a turbulent relationship with the French authoress George Sand. Always in frail health, he died in Paris in 1849, aged thirty-nine, of pulmonary tuberculosis. Chopin's compositions were written primarily for the piano as solo instrument. Though they are technically demanding, the emphasis in his style is on nuance and expressive depth. Chopin invented musical forms such as the instrumental ballade and was responsible for major innovations in the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.
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