One of the biggest challenges facing an improvising musician is to deliver a performance that holds the attention of the listener when playing completely solo. To achieve success, one must dig deep into one's musical psyche in order to invoke the muse within. The improvisations on this album are all unedited single takes.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Shostakovich was no child prodigy - he began piano lessons at nine - but success as a composer came early when his First Symphony, written as a graduation piece, was acclaimed in Leningrad at the premiere in May 1926. That said, there is some fine chamber music in Shostakovich's student output. Much of the Two Pieces for String Octet Op. 11 actually predates the First Symphony Op. 10, remarkably assured for an eighteen year-old. The Two Pieces for String Quartet on the other hand did not surface at all until 1984! Dedicated to the J. Vuillaume Quartet they give us the suggestion of a Shostakovich quartet sound circa 1931 - seven years before the real thing. The original stimulus to compose a piano quintet came from musicians of the Beethoven Quartet who had asked him for something they could all play together. But Shostakovich must have relished the technical challenge of a medium which few twentieth century composers had been prepared to tackle because of it's peculiar problems of balance and texture. The composer himself gave the first performance with the Beethoven Quartet in Moscow on 23 November 1940. And, utterly non-ideological as it was and is, the music won him a Stalin Prize. Shostakovich was one of the most important and prolific writer of string quartets in the 20th century. His String Quartet No. 8 comes from an important period in his personal as well as his artistic life. Musically it comes from the same period as his widely acknowledged masterpiece, the Tenth Symphony. Dissident writers have claimed it represents the composer himself - a lost voice in a cruel world.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The operatic overture is the composers “hook” to enthrall the audience immediately as the house lights dim and the first notes sound from the orchestra pit. Some of the most popular overtures are featured here, and come from powerhouse composers like Strauss, Smetana, and Verdi. William Boughton conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra for this recording. He has been with the ESO since he founded the ensemble in 1980. Since its inception, the ensemble has built an extensive discography with Nimbus Records.