Legendary Piano Recordings: The Complete Grieg, Saint-Saëns, Pugno, and Diémer (Marston Records, two CDs). Edvard Grieg, the first composer of significance to make records, cut nine 78s of his own compositions for piano during a visit to Paris in 1903. One year later Camille Saint-Saëns made the first in a series of sixteen recordings in which he plays piano solos and accompanies a good violinist and a not-so-good mezzo-soprano. All these stupendously rare performances, plus other important piano recordings of similar vintage, have now been transferred to CD by Ward Marston in meticulously pitch-corrected versions. The sound may be primitive, but the interpretations come through with uncanny, even eerie clarity, and as you listen to Grieg rippling blithely through “Butterfly” or Saint-Saëns tossing off his “Valse nonchalante” with fey elegance, you will feel closer to the lost world of nineteenth-century pianism than you ever before thought possible (TT).
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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