Started with a fairly obscure recording of Schwanengesang by Edouard Stocker and Magda Rusy. This was followed by one of few recordings of American music in the set, some Gershwin conducted by Bernstein … a transfer to Hungaroton. The cover of this is intriguing. At first sight you see a line drawing of a nattily dressed man in 1920’s style clothes – then on closer inspection you realise he is superimposed on a female recumbent nude. Across both of them the words Café Royal appear in mirror-writing, as if you are inside the café and the man and woman are floating outside it.
Alfred Brendel plays two of Beethoven’s lesser piano works, the ‘2nd’ piano concerto and the Choral Fantasy with different orchestras. Alan Civil plays all Mozart’s horn concertos with the RPO and Kempe (they all fit on a disc because some are fragmentary). The Smetana Quartet play the ‘Trout’ and the inevitable Quartettsatz. I started on our many discs of Chopin (who seems to have as many as anyone in our collection) with Tamás Vásáry playing the Etudes (another Taphouse closing-down purchase). Finally, I moved on to another well-represented composer, Shostakovich, with his piano concertos played by Alexeev with the ECO and Maksymiuk.