“An orchestra musician is an artist, not an employee, and artists must be given the chance to take initiatives and to be creative. Only an orchestra of true artists - making music as a highly disciplined team - is able to realize the dreams of the composers and pass on an uplifting experience to the audience, touching all listeners deep in their heart. This is our aim for which the Budapest Festival Orchestra has been created."Iván Fischer

Originally released in 1991, this recording has been through several reissues that have tweaked both the sound and the contents. It's hard to blame Sony for recycling it, for the album was a winner from the start; it has been supplanted by historical-instrument recordings but remains state-of-the-art for performances using modern instruments. Combining tracks recorded in 1988 and 1990, this was originally the tail end of Murray Perahia's justly celebrated cycle of Mozart concertos. The central attraction is the Concerto for two pianos and orchestra in E flat major, K. 365, where Perahia, Radu Lupu, and the English Chamber Orchestra, all without benefit of a conductor, deliver a performance that's spacious, imposing, detailed, and spontaneous, all at the same time. All the musicians seem to operate as a single unit, with the drama provided by the orchestra in the opening material of the first movement answered by supple dual explorations from the two pianists. The program is filled out with rather unusual works, which has also added to the album's appeal down through the years. The Concerto for three pianos and orchestra in F major, K. 242, is presented in Mozart's own two-piano arrangement, which attests to the composer's fondness for this lightweight little piece. The Fantasia in F minor, K. 608, originally for an instrument known as a mechanical clock, mechanical organ, or flute-clock (it is a small machine with a clock on the front, above which miniature organ pipes would be automatically activated by the mechanism, an "authentic" performance would also include moving pastoral scenes on one panel, some of which could apparently get somewhat erotic). Mozart transcribed the work for two pianos, and Ferruccio Busoni later expanded this transcription in much the same way as he did the works of Bach, adding chromatic complications and late Romantic phrasing and pedal use. Perahia and Lupu take this yet another step, restoring material from the original that Busoni omitted. Finally is the rarely played Andante and Variations for four hands in G major, K. 501, which cleanses the palate after the sweet flavors of the Busoni. At a true budget price level, this may be the reissue of choice; at least one other version of the disc includes music by Brahms that breaks the carefully constructed mood of the program.© TiVo

Playing four-hands piano was both vital in the dissemination of music in the nineteenth century and also a popular domestic activity. The French composers recorded here span the Romantic century, from the salon charm of Chaminade and Massenet and the virtuosity of Alkan’s wild dance to the innocence of the family music-room in pieces by Chausson, Godard and Ropartz. The original 1853 Parisian Erard piano on which this recording was made combines warmth with bell-like clarity due to its straight stringing, allowing it to produce a surprising variety of appealing, expressive textures. © Toccata Classics

Pianist Saskia Giorgini found both critical and commercial success with her 2022 recording of Liszt's Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, and this 2023 release, which immediately climbed onto classical best-seller charts, follows directly on the earlier album, with the same Bösendorfer piano and the same recording location, the Lisztzentrum in Raiding, Austria. Listeners will not be disappointed, for Consolations has all the virtues of her first Liszt album and adds a few more. The wonderfully controlled lyricism of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses recurs in the heavily programmatic title work, where Giorgini's playing hints at the presence of all kinds of stories. She plainly excels in the religious, late Liszt, and there are two wonderful examples here, the Deux Legends, portraits of St. Francis of Assisi praying to the birds, and of St. François de Paule. These are difficult works that combine mysticism with Lisztian virtuosity; annotator Mark Berry is right to stress that Liszt did not fully renounce the virtuosity in his later years, but that is not all. Giorgini is just as good in the flashy Three Caprices-Valses and the reflective Liebesträume, the best-known music on the album. In the Valse-Impromptu, she has an uncanny way of suggesting the feeling of spontaneity that seems to have marked Liszt's own playing. Will Giorgini go on with Liszt? She certainly has the technical and emotional wherewithal to do so and to take on more famous works than these.© James Manheim /TiVo

The new Trio Ernest attempts to make a splash here with its cheeky buried-in-the-score graphics and unconventional Haydn All-Stars title, which doesn't make more than a little bit of sense, but the program and playing can stand on their own. Trio Ernest offers some late Haydn trios, all hanging right at the point where the piano trio was emerging as an independent genre, along with works that show the lasting influence of Haydn's chamber music. The players are right that this influence is a bit overlooked, showing up in works as diverse as a Brahms song (here transcribed for piano trio) and Ravel's little Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, with its musical realization of the letters of Haydn's name. Also included is Lieber Joseph! by composer Jacqueline Fonteyn, a work composed in a modernist idiom in which Haydn's melodic shapes and motifs are nevertheless easily recognizable. Trio Ernest has committed to including a work by a female composer in each concert, and this one bodes well for their ability to find interesting material and perform it convincingly. The Haydn trios themselves are imbued with the high spirits that are essential to a successful Haydn performance. With clear sound from the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, this release announces an important new presence in the crowded piano trio scene.© James Manheim /TiVo

From one recording to the next, French pianist Claire Désert continues her exploration of Schumann’s piano works with a new album focussed on the variation genre. She explores the manifold, elusive moods found in the “Symphonic Studies”, the “Etudes in Variation form on a Theme of Beethoven” and the “Geistervariationen” (Ghost Variations), like a diary of the composer. From a tribute to Beethoven to the ultimate variations composed right before sinking into the Rhine, it is all Romanticism that is sung by Schumann's piano, with its breaks and ideals. © Mirare