Known by connoisseurs the world over as a "musician's musician" and as one of the great piano virtuosos of the 20th century, Jakob Gimpel, who...

Known by connoisseurs the world over as a "musician's musician" and as one of the great piano virtuosos of the 20th century, Jakob Gimpel, who was born in Polish Austria, was especially known for his unique interpretations of Chopin. To these, he brought a classical elegance, authentically born of his intimate familiarity with the Polish musical ethos and the cultural stylistic brilliance of Imperial Vienna, combined with a formidable musical intellect and a poetic and tonal imagination. Sadly, he never enjoyed a major career (he died in 1989). He made a few recordings for Vox in the middle 1940s, a few recordings elsewhere, but they never attracted much attention. He ended up teaching in Los Angeles and toward the end of his life he gave highly effective concerts at the Ambassador College in Pasadena. Harold Schonberg has said: " He should have been recognized as a great pianist from the beginning, but history has passed him over. The man had everything - unerring fingers; a big, juicy sound; an ear that supplied him with all kinds of coloristic effects, and a musical approach that combined an authentic 19th-Century romanticism with an unusual degree of personality. He makes you hear new things in the music without ever sounding forced or eccentric. These ideas will be unsettling to literalists, but they make sense and throw us back to a period when artists were expected to impose their own ideas about the music without distorting the notes or the meaning. We also have in stock the first volume in this series, an All-Chopin Recital that he gave in the Ambassador Auditorium on May 11, 1978 Cambria CB 1070, a two CD set also available at a special price.