Guiomar Novaes was one of the greatest Brazilian pianists but I didn't know that when I bought this two-disc set. What originally attracted me to this collection was the conductor, not the soloist, leading the three Piano Concertos, Otto Klemperer. Indeed, the Beethoven 4th, Chopin 2nd and Schumann are performed well with the Vienna Symphony, in good sound from the 1950s, but it is the various solo pieces that are the true highlight of this set, and showcase the real magic of Novaes' playing.

Claudio Arrau (1903-1991) is a pianist fully deserving of the epithet ‘legendary’. His rigorous intellect and sense of the sublime found expression in his transcendent technique and sumptuous, yet lucid sonorities. The recordings in this 24CD collection, a significant portion of Arrau’s legacy from the years between 1921 and 1962, are indispensable to his extensive discography. They can now be heard in their full glory, thanks to a process of restoration and HD remastering using the original tapes (for recordings from the LP era) or the best available source (for 78s). Among them are four world premiere releases: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30, op. 109, a Chopin étude, and two pieces by Liszt.

Otto Klemperer's Mahler is invariably dry-eyed, yet urgent, a valuable corrective to the number of latter-day interpreters who would either self-indulgently wallow in the music's sentiment or, even worse, treat it as pure sonic architecture, as though it were pre-Schoenberg. If this 1967 reading of the Ninth sounds slightly detached by modern standards, if its expressive points seem slightly understated, it is nevertheless deeply engaged and masterfully controlled. Klemperer was beginning to slow down by this point in his career, and the tempos are just a hair on the slow side, especially in the two middle movements. But the old firmness of conception and rocklike steadiness are still there, even in the stormy weather of the Rondo-Burleske.

By the time he made these celebrated recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the early 1960s, Otto Klemperer was a grand old man of conducting. Christa Ludwig, by contrast, was in the glowing early prime of her extraordinary career, which encompassed repertoire for both mezzo-soprano and soprano. “Klemperer was marvellous for the singing,” she later said, “because he did nothing against the composer.” This collection shows the fruits of their collaboration in Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms and Mahler.

Cet album Cascavelle reprend ce qui semble être l'intégralité d'un concert Mozart de Clara Haskil, Otto Klemperer et l'Orchestre du Gürzenich de Cologne en 1956, complété par le Concerto de Schumann de quelques semaines postérieur avec Ernest Ansermet et son orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Comme date d'enregistrement la notice indique le 09 septembre 1956 pour Mozart et le 10 octobre 1956 pour Schumann alors que trône en fronton de la couverture de l'album un superbe « Live recording – Montreux April 9th 1956 ». Pourtant c'est bien cette dernière date d'avril qui semble erronée, le concert Mozart ayant bel et bien été donné dans le cadre du Septembre musical de Montreux.

The Philharmonia Orchestra was in superb form in the autumn of 1957 when the opportunity came for it to perform all nine Beethoven symphonies, plus the five piano concertos, in a series of 10 concerts at London's Royal Festival Hall under the baton of Otto Klemperer. Credit for that certainly should go to Herbert von Karajan, who had been the orchestra's principal conductor since its founding a decade earlier, and had recently been tapped by the Berlin Philharmonic as its conductor for life.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, is a piano concerto written by Frédéric Chopin in 1830, when he was twenty years old. It was first performed on 12 October of that year, at the Teatr Narodowy (the National Theatre) in Warsaw, Poland, with the composer as soloist, during one of his "farewell" concerts before leaving Poland. It was the first of Chopin's two piano concertos to be published, and was therefore given the designation of Piano Concerto "No. 1" at the time of publication, even though it was actually written immediately after the premiere of what was later published as Piano Concerto No. 2.