Leonard Pennario: The Complete RCA Album Collection

Nobody plays the piano better than Leonard Pennario, wrote the eminent critic Andrew Porter in Londons New Statesman in 1952, when the competition would have included none less than Horowitz in his prime. That year, Pennario began recording for Capitol Records in Los Angeles, and a decade later he moved to RCA Victor, for which label he made a series of distinguished albums. To mark the tenth anniversary of Pennarios death, Sony Classical is now pleased to reissue all of the pianists RCA recordings together for the first time in a single set. Born in 1924 in Buffalo, New York, Pennario gave his first public performance there at the age of seven, later moving with his family to Los Angeles, where his teachers included the legendary Isabella Vengerova. His breakthrough came in 1936, when he made his orchestral debut deputizing for an indisposed soloist with the Dallas Symphony. On that memorable occasion, the twelve-year-old performed the Grieg Piano Concerto, a work he had never heard, let alone played, until a few days earlier. Dazzling concertos would, of course, feature prominently in Pennarios discography, and his first RCA Victor releases in 1964 included Rachmaninoffs Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Franck Symphonic Variations with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops and the two Liszt concertos with René Leibowitz conducting the London Symphony. Among the acclaimed solo recital albums in this set are a collection of popular short pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorák, Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Grieg, Falla, Debussy, Gershwin and Rachmaninoff which Pennario plays with admirable care and impeccable taste (High Fidelity) as well as both books of Debussy Préludes: This is a most beautifully played set (Gramophone). Although Pennario became best known as a formidable virtuoso, he was also renowned for his performances of chamber music, and RCA documents his participation in the famous series given by Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.