Complete RCA & Columbia Album Collection

In his own words, Raymond Lewenthal was an octave thrower, long-distance arpeggioer and general producer of volcanic rumbles. This hugely talented, extroverted pianist was also a key figure in the revival of a great deal of 19th-century piano music, most of all that of Charles-Valentin Alkan. Sony Classicals new collection of Lewenthals complete recordings for RCA and Columbia Masterworks celebrates this maverick pianists recorded legacy, with three LPs of material specially remastered from the analogue tapes. Its release comes thirty years after Lewenthals death in November 1988. Both a showman and a scholar, Lewenthal was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1923, working as a child movie actor in Hollywood before beginning formal piano study at the age of 15. Though his early career in the US flourished after a debut with Dmitri Mitropoulos and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1948, he withdrew from public performance a few years later after being attacked in Central Park. By the time he returned to concertizing in the 1960s, he had become a champion of Alkans, much of whose music he edited for publication. His enthusiasm for obscure Romantic repertoire was not limited to Alkan. He revived Adolf von Henselts little-known Piano Concerto in F minor, a spectacularly difficult work, recording it with Sir Charles Mackerras and the LSO alongside his own version of Liszts Totentanz. The sheer virtuoso bravura of it all is dazzling, wrote Gramophone. With the same orchestra and conductor Eleazar de Carvalho, he also recorded Anton Rubinsteins Fourth Piano Concerto in D minor, and the dazzling finale to Franz Xaver Scharwenkas Second Concerto in C minor. Two albums of Alkans solo piano music are a fitting tribute to Lewenthals obsession; they include his Symphonie, Grande Sonatine and many studies and miniatures. Lewenthal also recorded the Hexaméron, a work written collaboratively by five pianists and put together by Liszt, and Liszts Réminiscences de Norma. This vital, vivacious communicator still has a lot to say to us today, about a repertoire that continues to benefit from his passionate advocacy.