Litolff was one of the great virtuosi of the nineteenth century. His five Concertos Symphoniques (the first of which is now unfortunately lost) were of major influence in the transition from the Classically-derived concertos of Hummel, Moscheles and Chopin to the more symphonic late-Romantic concertos. He pioneered the use of a four-movement structure which included a Scherzo (as in Brahms's Second Concerto) and gave the orchestra much more of the thematic material. Indeed, although the piano writing is very brilliant, much of it is accompanimental. The Second Concerto is a real rarity, the orchestral parts proving very hard to locate. This is probably its first performance in over 130 years.

Jimin Oh-Havenith’s fourth album for audite is dedicated to distinctive masterpieces of Russian piano music, including Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and a selection of etudes and preludes by Scriabin and Rachmaninov.

Borodin’s First Symphony isn’t especially interesting, but his Second is a masterpiece, tightly constructed, brilliantly orchestrated, and tunefully delightful. It’s really the only work of its period to rank with the symphonies of Tchaikovsky (along with, possibly, Balakirev’s First), and Tjeknavorian’s performance of it, indeed of all three works, is outstanding. He doesn’t fuss with or manipulate tempos or textures, preferring instead to keep the music moving energetically and allowing the musicians of the National Philharmonic to inject as much color and vitality as possible. The scherzo flashes by like lightning, the slow movement is aptly seductive, and the finale dazzles. As I suggested, the other two works are less obviously successful, but the performances are no less adept. Produced by Charles Gerhardt, we can expect fine sonics, and that’s just what RCA delivers. In this music, you won’t find better.

Wagner’s medieval romance of the Swan Knight comes to life in a lavish production by August Everding, filmed live at the Metropolitan Opera in 1986. James Levine conducts a stellar cast led by Eva Marton, Leonie Rysanek and Peter Hofmann in the title role.

The disc is the thirteenth volume in the famous Hyperion 'Romantic Piano Concerto' series; it also follows on from Stephen Coombs's four-volume set of Glazunov's music for solo piano, meaning that Coombs has now recorded all of Glazunov's music for piano soloist.

Parry was indebted to the grand Romantic tradition of the late nineteenth century, and his colourful and exuberant concerto probably lays claim to be the first British piece written in such a style worthy of comparison with contemporary continental models. It is a virtuoso work, extrovertly conceived for piano and undoubtedly written for the technical proficiency of Edward Dannreuther, one of the most important exponents of the grand concerto style in London during the 1870s and 1880s.

Friends of long standing as well as regular partners in chamber music, Michael Collins and Stephen Hough bring their combined musical insights and expertise to bear on Johannes Brahms’s sonatas for clarinet and piano. Together with the composer’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano and clarinet quintet, the sonatas are among the most treasured works in the repertoire of the instrument – but it is partly down to good luck that we have them at all. When Brahms in 1891 heard the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had already announced his retirement. He was enraptured by Mühlfeld’s playing and its vocal qualities, however, and made a ‘comeback’: during the following couple of years he composed all four of his clarinet works.

Giuseppe Verdi's first big Paris hit, Jérusalem is an 1847 rewrite of I Lombardi. Along with a new French text, the action is clarified, characters and scenes are dropped, the tenor role is beefed up, and the obligatory ballet is added, among other changes. It's a more coherent opera in this version, although Italian audiences have clung to I Lombardi, which is still mounted on the world's stages. The Philips team, however, makes a powerful case for this French grand opera story of betrayal, love, war and rescue, penitence, and vindication painted in primary colors on a canvas of Crusaders and villains, rousingly set to effective, if blunt, music.

When d’Albert appeared in 1881 at one of Hans Richter’s concerts in London he played his own Piano Concerto in A, but the work was never published and has not survived. However, from a review in The Musical Times of November 1881 we can reasonably deduce that the Concerto had the traditional three movements. The reviewer stated that it was ‘uncompromising in its pretensions to rank with the chief of its kind; largely developed, ambitious in style and character, and rigidly observant of classical form, while redundant in matter’.

Kaler's playing of these Romantic sweetly-tuned works is excellent.

When one considers the life of Nikolai Karlovich Medtner it is impossible not to be amazed by his strange, tragic and yet marvellous destiny. He was recognized in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century as one of the most important composers and was, with Scriabin and Rachmaninov, an extremely influential, almost ‘cult’ figure for a whole generation of the Russian intellectual élite. He was also a great pianist and an outstanding musical thinker. His personality was completely divorced from everyday life, but the depth and power of his intellect, entirely absorbed in music, philosophy and the history of culture, were deeply respected by such contemporaries as Nikisch, Rachmaninov, Furtwängler, Koussevitsky, Glazunov and Prokofiev.

The works of Emánuel Moór (1863–1931) ought to be celebrated as among the major achievements of Romantic music, but because of Moór’s peripatetic life – he was born in Hungary, studied in Vienna (with Bruckner), performed in the US and across Europe, became a UK citizen and settled and died in Switzerland – no country has claimed and promoted him to the degree he deserves. Moór’s musical language offers a deeply satisfying blend of contrapuntal mastery and ardent lyricism, as the works on this album – written for or involving the viola – demonstrate. In time he will be recognised as one of the masters of his age.

Composed in feverish bouts interrupted by long periods of inaction, Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch was brought to completion in 1896. The 46 songs are settings of poems in German by Paul Heyse, after Italian folk songs – miniatures with a duration of less than 2 minutes in most cases. Heyse’s collection numbered more than 350 poems, but Wolf ignored the ballads and laments, and concentrated almost exclusively on the rispetti. These are short love poems which chart, against a Tuscan landscape, the everyday jealousies, flirtations, joys and despairs of men and women in love. Heyse’s translations often intensify the simple Italian of the original poems, and in their turn, Wolf’s settings represent a further heightening of emotion. Miniatures they may be, but many of the songs strike unforgettably at the heart.

Part of a series of discs devoted to forgotten composers associated with the Bavarian capital of Munich, this release exemplifies the city's still-palpable conservatism. Franz Lachner, who grew up so poor that he and his five siblings had to study music by drumming their fingers on an imaginary keyboard, made his living as composers had for centuries before, but as few did in his own time: as an employee of court and church. The Germans have a word for the style exemplified here, which is not well known outside of a few atypical examples by : they call it the "Palestrina Renaissance." Heard here are a Mass in F major, Op. 130; a Stabat Mater, Op. 154; and a setting of Psalm 15.