Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And the first volume, Music for Relaxation, offers a miscellany of classical pieces from piano (the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata) to orchestral music by Grieg, Elgar and Borodin.

Chopin raised the pedagogic ‘study’ (étude) to entirely new levels with his Opp. 10 and 25. Virtuoso studies, testing the technique of any pianist, they are also incredibly poetic works. Here they are unforgettably played by Nikita Magaloff. The ‘Trois Nouvelles Études’, three tiny gems that were posthumously published, complete this oeuvre.

Chopin was not a composer synonymous with Jorge Bolet and yet Bolet’s huge technique and limpid tone were totally suited to the long lines of poetry that Chopin wove, as this recording of both miniatures (the 24 Préludes) as well as the larger-scale works (Ballades, Fantasie) demonstrates.

The Swedish-Russian soprano, Elisabeth Söderström, made several landmark recordings for Decca – operas by Janacek, the complete songs of Rachmaninov and Sibelius both of which were recorded with Vladimir Ashkenazy. With Ashkenazy too she recorded songs by Chopin and her lyric/dramatic soprano fully captures the range of these songs, from tenderness to pathos. Ashkenazy is […]

When Vladimir Horowitz died in 1989, many music-lovers bemoaned the passing of ‘the last Romantic’ – an allusion to a bigger-than-life and subjective brand of pianism more typical of the first part of the 20th century than of its close. But was Horowitz really ‘the last’? When Jorge Bolet died a year later, the phrase […]

As he explains in his liner notes for this CD, Lynn Harrell uses the voice as his point of departure for this collection of encores. They are largely reflective pieces with a bit of fun such as the unfairly forgotten Glazunov ‘Spanish Serenade’ thrown in for good measure. And this once popular disc now makes […]

Jorge Bolet was an avowed Romantic, happy to relax once the serious business of his recital was over. Like Moiseiwitsch, he could be mischievously enterprising, challenging his audience to guess the composer of this or that rare poetic jewel or confection or, like Rubinstein, he could affectionately confirm and recreate their favourites. With delightful old […]

Chopin’s mazurkas are unique in that they occupied him throughout the course of his career. He wrote nearly sixty of them. The first was written when he was still a teenager and the last was written in 1849, the year of his death. By the time he had completed the four mazurkas that comprise Op. […]

‘When he is at his best he plays more beautifully than any of us’ wrote Alfred Brendel on the pianism of Wilhelm Kempff. Eloquence is proud to announce a mini-edition devoted to some of the rarer recordings of Wilhelm Kempff, born in 1895 at Jüterbog, the son of a church organist. By 1916, Kempff was […]

Lazar Berman, a bear of a man whom The Times of London called ‘one of the last unabashed exponents of the Romantic tradition of Russian pianism’, was known for the power of his playing and for his prodigious technique but was also capable of great delicacy at the keyboard. The core of his repertoire was […]

The violinist who straddled the divide between the old ways and the new, was the Viennese virtuoso, Wolfgang Eduard Schneiderhan. He was born on 28th May 1915 and beginning violin lessons at five, he polished his technique under Sevcík and Winkler. From the 1950s onward, Schneiderhan displayed all the qualities normally associated with German musicians. […]