Musically-aware Dubliners in the early 1860s might have already predicted a musical career for Stanford. We may wonder, however, whether they would have foreseen a pianist or a composer. While not yet ten he presented a tasteful if hardly virtuosic program of Beethoven, Handel, Mendelssohn, Moscheles, Mozart and Bach. A longer and more demanding program about two years later drew the comment: “… Master Charles V. Stanford …is doubtless destined for a great position in the musical world … a listener alone of whatever experience, not knowing of the youth, or seeing the performer would suppose an artist at the instrument who had passed through years of mature study; neatness and precision, elastic touch, expression and finish seem to have been bestowed by nature in this case, for Master Stanford plays with his head as well as with his hands”. Sheva Collection releases here the first in a series of Stanford’s solo piano music, with many of the works appearing for the first time.