Born in Seoul in 2000, Jeonghwan Kim began playing the piano at the age of six. In the following years, his numerous first prizes in national competitions led to his admittance to the Seoul Arts Centre Academy for Young Talented Musicians aged just nine. He and his family then moved to Berlin in 2011, where he has continued to earn extensive recognition in prestigious national and international piano competitions. He won two first prizes in the successive 2014 and 2015 editions of the 'Jugend musiziert' Competition. At the 2017 International Liszt Competition for Young Pianists in Weimar, he received the third prize along with two special prizes. Since then, he's won major prizes at the Aarhus International Piano Competition, the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy competition in Berlin, and the Sendai International Piano Competition. In July 2023 Jeonghwan entranced Australian audience as winner of the 2023 Sydney International Piano Competition. Such achievement was awarded after a series of recitals, chamber music and two concertos which he played with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Benjamin Northey at the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. As part of his prizes he was awarded this live recording encompassing his complete solo rounds at the Sydney International Piano Competition.

Taking Second Prize at the 2023 Sydney International Piano Competition, the Belarussian pianist Uladzislau (Vladislav) Khandohi stunned jury and audience members alike with phenomenally precise and committed accounts of repertoire from Schubert via Chopin and Prokofiev to Mark Grandison. His solo-repertoire performances from the competition are presented here in an album which will cause pianophiles everywhere to prick up their ears. Born in 2002 to a family of dulcimer players in Minsk, Khandohi demonstrated prodigious musical accomplishment from an early age. Having started lessons at age seven, inspired by his brother's piano practice, he was winning major competitions five years later. He joined the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in 2020 and impressed as a finalist at the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth, Texas. 'I want to play for the audience,' Khandohi says. 'I love music because of it's emotions - that's how I choose the music that I play. I think it belongs not to the earth but the air.' This open-hearted musicianship marks out his live Sydney performances of the three major works on this album: the Corelli Variations by Rachmaninoff, the Eighth Sonata of Prokofiev, and Broken Threads by the contemporary Australian composer Mark Grandison. Breathtaking clarity of thought and fingerwork. No less captivating in it's way is his Chopin playing: the surges of passion and rubato in the F sharp minor Polonaise, and the contrasting simplicity of phrasing in the Mazurka Op.17 No.4. More knife-edge articulation and high-wire flashes of inspiration mark out Khandohi's accounts of 'Scarbo' from Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit and the Four Etudes Op.2 written the year earlier (1908) by the teenage Prokofiev. The Russian composer finds Khandohi in his element, and he brings a remarkable grip to the Eighth Sonata's enigmatic progression from songful tragedy to violent combustion.

Sonatas by Beethoven, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Jan�cek display the artistry and pianistic firepower of Wynona Wang in live performances from the 2023 Sydney International Piano Competition, in which she was a popular finalist. As a finalist at The Sydney, Wang demonstrated a questing musical mind in her chosen solo repertoire. The Beijing-born, Juilliard-trained pianist explored the form and the expressive power of the Sonata as a genre through four landmark examples of the genre. Beethoven's 'Appassionata' stands among the tragic-heroic of his mid-period masterpieces. The Dante Sonata became the first of many tributes paid by Franz Liszt to the Italian poet and The Divine Comedy. Rachmaninoff was inspired by an even more influential literary epic, Goethe's Faust, to compose his own First Piano Sonata, in which each movement depicts the anti-hero, his lover Gretchen and the devil Mephistopheles in Lisztian terms. Jan�cek brought the evolving story of the sonata into the 20th century with the two surviving movements of his Sonata 1.X.1905, responding not to tragedy in literature but to the real-life killing of a carpenter's apprentice on the streets of Brno. In live and compellingly spontaneous accounts from the 2023 Sydney, Wynona Wang accompanied these sonatas with Rachmaninoff in songful vein, with his own transcription of his popular Daisies romance, and his G flat major Prelude. Four movements from Ravel's late Le tombeau de Couperin complement two enchanting Preludes from the set of twelve composed by the contemporary Australian composer Aristea Mellos, a seguidilla and a lullaby.

BRAVA BERGANZA

Alfred Deller's only complete recording of a Handel opera. First staged at the King's Theatre in London in February 1732 and revived two years later, Sosarme was not heard again in full (if not entirely complete) until a BBC broadcast in January 1955, conducted by Anthony Lewis. Conductor and performers then made this recording a month later under the aegis of Louise Hanson-Dyer and her L'Oiseau-Lyre label. 'Though not the best exemplar of Handel's skills as a musical dramatist,' according to the Handel scholar Anthony Hicks, 'Sosarme consistently illustrates his greatness as a composer.' The greatest riches of the score are found in the exquisite arias for Sosarme and Elmira, and above all in their two duets, the first of which ('Per le porte del tormento' in Act 2) transcends it's context with music of piercing radiance. It was this recording of Sosarme that introduced many listeners to Alfred Deller (1912-1979) and to countertenors in general. Deller's unmistakable instrument embodied, by it's seeming effortlessness, the art that conceals art. When the harpsichordist and conductor Gustav Leonhardt was once asked whether he had ever allowed anyone to tell him how to perform anything, he replied, 'only Deller'. Deller was joined by a cast of British singers who made, with Lewis, several other recordings for L'Oiseau-Lyre that cast both well-known and unfamiliar music in a new and historically informed light. Several have been reissued by Eloquence: among them Semele (4827449), The Fairy Queen (4825063) and sacred works by Couperin (4828542) and Mozart (4825041).

Newly remastered from the original L'Oiseau Lyre tapes, a little-known Bach recording in the true French style. The modern phenomenon of the Cello Suites as a staple of any record collection may be laid at the feet of the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, whose HMV recording, released in 1939, belatedly placed the set alongside The Well-Tempered Clavier and the solo violin works as a cornerstone of Bach's instrumental output in the consciousness of listeners who could not play a note of his music. Another two decades elapsed before a new generation of cellists took up the mantle of Casals in the LP era. Among their select number was Jean-Max Cl�ment, whose 1958 studio recording for L'Oiseau Lyre was released two years later. By then he had made a notable concerto appearance in London with Sir Thomas Beecham: 'His tone was very small indeed,' reported The Times, 'but it was of such rare beauty and refinement that we could have listened to him all night.' Like his contemporaries such as Fournier and Starker, Cl�ment used a four-string cello to play the five-string Sixth Suite, and his portamento and rubato belong to Bach performance of a different era: not until Anner Bylsma's 1979 recording would a historically informed set of the Cello Suites achieve wide circulation. However, the unostentatious elegance and refined taste of Clement's playing offer rewards of their own, especially in repertoire that finds Bach at his most French in style. The original LPs have long been sought after and fetched exorbitant prices. This new Eloquence reissue sheds light on both the French cello school and on the ever-evolving nature of Bach interpretation. The booklet includes a new essay from Peter Quantrill, placing both the suites and the recording in context.

Collected for the first time - Erich Kleiber's rare recordings with the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Berliner Philharmoniker made for Polydor/Grammophon and newly remastered for this release. Erich Kleiber's appointment to the musical directorship of the Staatsoper Berlin in 1923 proved to be the making of his career. Hired on the strength of a single Fidelio, he thrilled audiences and critics with performances of unparalleled vigour and intensity. He soon began recording for the short-lived Vox company (not to be confused with the later US label) but in 1926 he agreed a contract with the Grammophon label, building on his regular season of orchestral concerts which were interspersed with opera performances. Here, newly remastered by Mark Obert-Thorn and issued complete for the first time in any format, is that Grammophon legacy of Kleiber's Berlin years with both the Staatskapelle and the celebrated Berliner Philharmoniker. Beginning modestly enough with four of Mozart's German dances - to fill two sides of a 78rpm record - the scope of the sessions expanded to take in complete symphonies by Beethoven (No. 2), Schubert (No. 8 'Unfinished') and Dvor�k (No. 9 'From the New World') alongside much popular repertoire such as the incidental music to Rosamunde and A Midsummer Night's Dream and the overtures to William Tell and Die Fledermaus. Many of these recordings were not marketed or reviewed abroad despite their artistic excellence, but Kleiber's 1928 account of 'Vltava' from M� vlast soon gained classic status. No wonder, now, when listening again to the moonlit interlude and Kleiber's gently flowing pulse, his superb balancing of parts which transcends the limitations of the technology and makes a nonsense of his apparent reluctance to record. Alternative versions of 'Vltava', as well as the second take of a side from the 'New World' Symphony which became Kleiber's final Grammophon album (recorded in May and August 1929) are also presented. Alan Sanders provides an extensive note, and Mark Obert-Thorn provides a background to the sources for these recordings.

Complete on CD for the first time, the Deutsche Grammophon legacy of cult violinist Johanna Martzy, and of violist Michael Mann. Five original DG albums complete on two CDs. The brilliant tone and discriminating taste of the recordings made by Johanna Martzy (1924-79) mark her out among the finest violinists of her generation. Her EMI albums, supervised by Walter Legge, were once highly prized rarities. However, her recording career began with DG, who partnered her with two of their star conductors, Ferenc Fricsay and Eugen Jochum, in concertos by Dvor�k (1953) and Mozart (No 4, from 1955). She had performed the Dvor�k with Fricsay in concert, and their recording preserves a harmonious meeting of two fierily temperamental artists, widely rated among the best of the non-Czech recordings of the work. Plans for Martzy to record Tchaikovsky's concerto were abandoned when Legge poached her for HMV/EMI but subsequently lost interest. We are left with a small, precious legacy which opened in 1951, in the dying days of 78rpm recording, with her most constant recital partner, Jean Antonietti, at the piano. Encore pieces by Ravel, Milhaud, Falla and Szymanowski capture her Hungarian fire but do not represent her inclination away from virtuoso repertoire and towards the great sonatas and concertos. Mozart's F major Sonata followed, and then Beethoven's Op. 30 No. 3 as a coupling for the Mozart. When Martzy's encore pieces were reissued on LP, they were coupled in original fashion with two modern viola sonatas played by Michael Mann (1919-76), son of the novelist Thomas Mann. Mann's DG recordings were completed a few months later in May 1952 with the Quatre visages of Milhaud, issued on a seven-inch 45rpm disc; with this release they reach CD for the first time. In his time Mann was recognised as a fine musician in his own right and not merely his father's son. He played in the San Francisco Symphony before teaching German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Tully Potter provides the fascinating background note.

ROMANTIC FRENCH ARIAS

Supplementary to his legendary Beethoven cycles for Decca are Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt's recordings for Philips, Mercury, Deutsche Grammophon and Accord. They date from 1944 (Sutermeister) to 1972, when he made his last recording, fittingly by Mozart (Die G�rtnerin aus Liebe) a composer whom he revered above all: "We are too intimate friends... I can't even explain what it is I feel when I listen to his music, that makes my eyes damp and my breath catch.... At the end of my life I should like to dissolve myself completely in Mozart's music." Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt became a household name for many record collectors in the 1970s thanks to the cycle of Beethoven symphonies recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic (newly reissued in a companion box-set by Eloquence). Though he had made recordings and held several significant posts in pre-war Germany, such as directorship of opera houses in Berlin and Hamburg, his career took on a new lease of life after 1945 as the founder-conductor of the Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra, now known as the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. Their account of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade is dynamic and superbly prepared. The complete Hungarian Dances of Brahms is another delightful NDR/Schmidt-Isserstedt rarity revived in the set. The celebrated Vienna Philharmonic cycle of Beethoven piano concertos with Wilhelm Backhaus demonstrated what a sympathetic accompanist Schmidt-Isserstedt was. In this set he lends equally attentive support to Monique Haas in Ravel, Alfred Brendel in Brahms (the pianist's first recording of the First Piano Concerto), Wolfgang Schneiderhan in Mozart and Henryk Szeryng in Beethoven. After his international profile rose with the growing reputation of the NDR orchestra, he became a welcome guest on the podiums of Europe's great orchestras. From 1955-64 he was chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and in 1962 recorded with them the First and Third symphonies of Berwald. He gave many first performances of new works, especially by English and German composers; Die Sch�pfung by Wolfgang Fortner is a vivid seventeen-minute setting of a poem by the American poet James Weldon Johnson, a contemporary reimagining of Creation, for which Schmidt-Isserstedt and the NDR orchestra accompanied Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The conductor's first love was Mozart, and it is fitting that his last major recording project before his death from a heart attack in 1973 was another first on record, the German version (Die G�rtnerin aus Liebe) of Mozart's early opera La finta giardiniera, for which Philips assembled an all-star cast including Jessye Norman, Hermann Prey and Tatiana Troyanos. This was greeted after his death as the perfect memorial to his unassuming art; unlike many maestros of his generation and background, he got what he wanted not through fear but respect and a spirit of collective endeavour. Included, too, in this set are early (1940s) recordings made by the conductor of music by Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Sutermeister. This Eloquence set is issued with original covers and a new essay by Peter Quantrill on Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and his career.

For his debut recording, Australian pianist Calvin Abdiel presents three technically complex piano works by three Romantic composers. All works are based on the theme/variation form. For Schumann's fiendishly challenging Etudes symphoniques, Calvin adds his own interpolated sequence of the posthumous variations. The equally demanding Liszt 'R�miniscences' is based around three melodies from Mozart's Don Giovanni, and the recital concludes with the acrobatic Paganini Variations of Brahms, which Clara Schumann referred as the 'Witch's Variations'. Dubbed by The Australian as the 'Piano Man' and noted for his 'extraordinary pianistic authority', the Indonesian/Australian pianist Calvin Abdiel is establishing himself as one of the finest young musicians internationally. He has given high profile performances in numerous countries, including Australia, Austria, Russia, Indonesia, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. In 2021 he won the highest position of any Australian pianist at the Sydney International Piano Competition and also took out third prize.

Postcards from Vienna: drawn largely from the supreme players of the Wiener Philharmoniker, collected here are the Decca recordings of Viennese chamber music ensembles, including the New Vienna Octet, Vienna Wind Soloists, Wiener Waldhornverein and Vienna Flute Trio, many making their first international appearance on CD. Led by clarinetist Alfred Boskovsky, the first line-up of the Vienna Octet made it's last recording for Decca in 1972, but Boskovsky was behind the revival of the group's name, having already chosen the young members of the Vienna Philharmonic who would carry on the work of the ensemble and it's traditions of superbly mellifluous, silver-toned playing. Boskovsky's successor in the clarinet chair of the new Octet was Peter Schmidl, who contributes unique recollections to the booklet essay (by Peter Quantrill). Like their predecessors, the members of the Octet enjoyed an exclusive contract with Decca, and they began recording in 1977 with the same two classics of the Classical repertoire which defined their sound and their musical approach, the Octet by Schubert and the Septet by Beethoven - the set affords the fascinating opportunity to compare these interpretations with their digital-era remakes from 1990. At the same time, Schmidl and his colleagues in the VPO wind section established a wind ensemble along similar lines - the Vienna Wind Soloists (Wiener Bl�serensemble (Vienna Wind Soloists) - and their debut was much more adventurous, featuring works by Hindemith, Jan�cek and Ligeti which nevertheless glowed in the reflection of the distinctively transparent Vienna wind sound. The Wind Soloists went to DG in 1977 for a single recording, of the Wind Quintet by Schoenberg which Schmidl looks back on as a highlight of his career, but otherwise both ensembles found their natural home in the music of Mozart, making recordings of the Clarinet Trio and Quintet (Schmidl the soloist) and the three great wind serenades which have scarcely been rivalled on disc for instinctively flexible phrasing and sheer beauty of sound. The group's final sessions in 1992 included a pair of Beethoven rarities, the early Octet and Sextet, setting the seal on an often-underrated group of recordings which fully stand comparison with the more famous Vienna Octet recordings from the 50s and 60s.

Bliss: The Decca Originals: a new collection of Decca recordings of Bliss's music, including tracks previously unreleased on Decca CD as well as the complete version of the Violin Concerto with Alfredo Campoli. The career of Arthur Bliss was launched in London in the 1920s with provocative ensemble pieces such as Rout, but it was established by the Colour Symphony which Sir Edward Elgar invited him to write for the Three Choirs Festival. Bliss gradually became an establishment figure, appointed Master of the Queen's Music in 1953 and a fluent maker of music celebrating Englishness (such as Welcome the Queen, 1954) at a time when notions of national identity were coming under scrutiny as never before. However, Bliss always retained something of the dashing provocateur about him, and his best music often had a terse and anguished quality - such as the Introduction and Allegro which filled out the first LP of the Colour Symphony, or the score he wrote for the H.G. Wells film, Things to Come, or the Second String Quartet. These premiere, composer-conducted and -supervised recordings from the 1950s are reissued here, along with a genuine rarity, Baraza: a concertante movement for piano and orchestra crafted from the film music he wrote for Men of Two Worlds. In 1955 Bliss responded to a BBC commission with his most accomplished work in the concerto genre, written with the violinist Alfredo Campoli in mind. The premiere enjoyed a great success, and a Decca recording soon followed. However, the composer remained dissatisfied by the length of the concerto, and having recorded it complete, ensured that certain cuts were made for the first release. This missing material has been restored and the whole recording newly remastered, presenting on CD for the first time the complete score of the Concerto as it's composer and first soloist recorded it.

Mozart was Josef Krips's yardstick in music: 'My maxim is that everything has to sound as though it were by Mozart, or it will be a bad performance. ' Collected here are his Mozart symphony recordings with the Concertgebouworkest for Philips (1972-73), including a rehearsal sequence for Symphony No. 33, as well as the celebrated 1955 Vienna Don Giovanni for Decca. These are surrounded by the rare 'live' recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, his stereo Decca recordings of symphonies by Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and a previously unpublished overture by Weber. LIMITED EDITION. By the time stereo technology had become standard in the mid-1950s, Josef Krips had built an impressive recorded legacy for Decca documented in a companion set of mono recordings from Eloquence (Josef Krips Edition - Volume 1). Decca captured the conductor in several stereo remakes of canon repertoire - the last two symphonies of Schubert, Schumann's Fourth, the 'Haffner' and 'Jupiter' of Mozart - always with something deeper and wiser to say about repertoire which he had been exploring for 40 years and more, affording absorbing comparisons with his mono versions. Complementing his mono-era version of Mozart's Die Entf�hrung aus dem Serail, Krips recorded a stereo Don Giovanni, now with a more international, less Viennese cast headed by the vocally sensuous Don of Cesare Siepi and complemented by Fernando Corena as Leporello. Other vocal treasures in the set include Inge Borkh on imperious form in Beethoven, Weber and the closing scene of Strauss's Salome. Also located in the Decca archive was a stereo recording of Weber's Oberon Overture, now published for the first time. With the Vienna Symphony Orchestra we have a live recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with star soloists Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Too little of Krips's work outside the Austro-German canon was preserved on record, as the beautifully moulded shape and definition of his 1958 Vienna Philharmonic version of Tchaikovsky's Fifth demonstrates. You would easily guess from it that Mozart was Krips's yardstick in music, and for Philips he finally made a thorough-going survey of the mid-period and mature symphonies, from No. 21 onwards, which he had performed throughout his life. When released in France in harness with the early symphonies led by Marriner, the set included Krips leading a rehearsal sequence of Symphony No. 33 with his characteristically affable authority, and this has been released internationally for the first time on CD. As for the symphonies themselves, Krips sustains them with a natural warmth and breathing pulse that has always placed them in the top rank of 'traditional' performances. The conductor's legacy is addressed in a new essay by Niek Nelissen. Photos and original jackets evoke the 50s and 60s as much as Krips's music-making.

LIMITED EDITION. A meeting of minds in Amsterdam: the complete Philips recordings of Sir Colin Davis and the Concertgebouworkest made in the orchestra's acoustically optimal home and featuring classic accounts of Haydn, Berlioz, Dvor�k and Stravinsky. Davis lends these readings rhythmic impetus and unassuming authority; the orchestra and audio engineers respond with sonic warmth and transparency. Colin Davis made his debut with the Concertgebouw in 1966, and conductor and orchestra quickly established a mutual affinity. Interviewed by Niek Nelissen for a new appreciation of their legacy on record, a Concertgebouw violinist recalls his 'typically British' humour in rehearsal. Davis gave the musicians of 'the orchestra a lot of freedom. He kept control in a good way, which made him popular with the orchestra.' It took another eight years for Davis and the Concertgebouw to make their first records together, but they made up for lost time. The albums of Beethoven's Violin Concerto (with Arthur Grumiaux) and the Symphonie fantastique of Berlioz were universally praised for their rhythmic impetus, and for the kind of unassuming authority that became a hallmark of Davis's conducting. In both cases, the new recordings superseded earlier versions by the same artists (Davis's LSO Berlioz, and Grumiaux's previous Beethovens with the Concertgebouw) not least because of the warmth and the transparency of the Philips recordings, made in the orchestra's acoustically optimal home. There followed, over the next eight years, a string of artistic and commercial successes. The Concertgebouw had not recorded much Haydn before, but Davis harnessed their richness of tone and supple responses, and trained it on Haydn's late symphonies with revelatory results. Even while period-instrument performers began to bring new perspectives to Haydn, Davis's lively sympathy showed itself in the buoyant rhythms, the cultivated eighteenth-century phrasing and the exuberance which always belongs to his symphonies. Together, they recorded the complete 'London' symphonies followed by the 'Paris', and this set also features a bonus of No. 84, which Davis recorded with the English Chamber Orchestra for L'Oiseau-Lyre in 1960. This is the first time all of Davis's Haydn symphony recordings with the Concertgebouworkest have been issued collectively. Equally acclaimed was a Dvor�k series featuring the last three symphonies, the concertos for violin and cello (with Salvatore Accardo and Heinrich Schiff) and the Symphonic Variations. Throughout his long career, Davis took particular pleasure in bringing out the nostalgic side as well as the Czech-accented rhythms of Dvor�k's music, just as his approach to Igor Stravinsky never lost it's cutting edge, as displayed here in Concertgebouw recordings of the three early Diaghilev ballets. While these recordings have rarely left the catalogue thanks to their popularity, hearing them together sheds new light on the remarkable idiomatic strength of the Concertgebouw/Davis partnership. Original couplings and covers have the ring of nostalgic authenticity, complemented by Niek Nelissen's new essay and many archive photographs of conductor and orchestra.