Born in 1941, and currently chief conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, Christoph Eschenbach is one of today’s foremost conductor-pianists. This fascinating retrospective focuses on his brilliant early career as a pianist, when his searching musical intelligence, formidable technique and enthusiastic engagement with the music of his, and our, time produced many recordings that have stood the test of time.

Ates Orga’s detailed booklet notes offer a personal account from the man himself of his troubled start in life as an orphan, without the power of speech, learning to love and communicate through music. His quite fierce style is shaped by his admiration of great German intellectual musicians such as Edwin Fischer and Wilhelm Furtwängler, and finds an ideal analogue in the works of Beethoven, such as the Third and Fifth Piano Concertos, and the mighty ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata included in this set.

Equally, his refinement - evident nowadays in the French music he conducts in Paris and in his recordings with the Philadelphia orchestra - is reflected in his early portrayals of the romantic genius of Chopin (the Préludes) and Schumann (Kinderszenen).

His long friendship with Hans Werner Henze led the great German composer to write the Piano Concerto No.2 for Eschenbach, and this vast, Shakespeare-inspired work remains Henze at his boldest and most compelling - like Eschenbach himself, soaked in the German artistic tradition but finding new outgrowths from it.

Contents:
CD 1
Ludwig van Beethoven
- Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor Op.37
London Symphony Orchestra / Hans Werner Henze

- Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat Op.73 “Emperor Concerto”
Boston Symphony Orchestra / Seiji Ozawa

CD 2
Ludwig van Beethoven
- Piano Sonata No.29 in B flat Op. 106 “Hammerklavier”

CD 3
Frederic Chopin
- Préludes Op.28
Robert Schumann
- Kinderszenen Op.15

CD 4
Franz Schubert
Piano Sonata in A, D 959

CD 5
Franz Schubert
Piano Sonata in B flat, D 960

CD 6
Hans Werner Henze
- Piano Concerto No.2
London Philharmonic Orchestra / Hans Werner Henze