The ¨Piano Masters

[gert]

If you already own it, this is old news to you, but I just got the 40-CD "The Piano Masters" collection in the mail today and it's just simply a treasure chest. If you're in love with the piano, give yourself a treat: I bought it for a ridiculous 28 euros from a German Amazon-dealer. It has recordings by Arrau, Backhaus, Cortot, Gieseking, Gilels, Haskil, Horowitz, Fischer, Kempff, Landowska, Michelangeli, Rachmaninov, Rubinstein, Schnabel, Serking, Lipatti, and a bunch of other big names in the history of the instrument. If you've been reading about the great pianists past and present, it's just wonderful to be able to hear them as well and compare the aesthetics of different periods. Obviously, the sound quality varies, since some of the recordings are nearly a hundred years old, but in general it ranges from quite acceptable to very good. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know. Excuse me while I get comfortable and surrender my ears to a century of music.

p.s.: I may have to modify this post as I continue to go through the box. So far, only the Wilhelm Kempff CD has turned out to have atrocious sound, but then there are plenty of good Kempff recordings out there. On the other hand, plenty of the other CDs with recordings from the 1930s or even 1920s have pretty good transfers