The Westminster Recording Co – founded in New York in 1949 – was quick to exploit the high-quality tape recorders, sensitive mics, LP format and fast transatlantic flights available after the Second World War. The portability and editing capabilities of tape and a plethora of top-notch, relatively unknown performers lured the Westminster recording team to Europe, where they quickly built a library of superbly engineered albums recorded on location. Westminster’s sonic excellence, along with well-chosen A&R, ensured that the label became a mainstay of the classical catalogue in the 1950s and 1960s – its ‘Big Ben’ trademark, ‘Natural Balance’ tagline and striking jacket covers were instantly recognisable. Westminster amassed an enviable roster of performers, including conductors Scherchen, Monteux and Rodzinski, the Barylli and Vienna Konzerthaus string quartets, violinists Erica Morini and Peter Rybar, and a rich group of pianists at various stages in their careers. Much of the Westminster catalogue has been reissued, with collections devoted to pianists Fou Ts’ong, Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda, but Eloquence has now issued a compilation of 21 discs by 10 pianists who made only one or two discs for Westminster or American Decca.

Jörg Demus features on discs 1 and 2. His Bach recordings have already been reissued, but here he is in César Franck and Gabriel Fauré – his only solo recordings by either composer. Demus turns in a worthy performance of Franck’s Prélude, choral et fugue – the fugue is particularly fine – but the Prélude, aria et final is disappointingly lumpy and uneven. The Fauré on disc 2 is rather stodgy and earthbound, and he lacks the finesse and insight of, say, Germaine Thyssens-Valentin. The transfers throughout are generally good, but there is climax distortion on disc 1 – possibly from deterioration of the mastertape.

Edith Farnadi made 50 or so albums for Westminster. Her Liszt was particularly impressive and disc 3 features the first complete recording of all nine of the Soirées de Vienne, S427. These unfamiliar works are beautifully played (although Farnadi seems to have made a few additions to No 6). Disc 4 contains Godowsky’s insanely difficult Symphonic Metamorphoses after Strauss’s Künstlerleben, Die Fledermaus and Wein, Weib und Gesang. Farnadi obviously had fingers of steel but also a limited tonal range, and these performances sound hard and over-driven at times. Disc 5 contains the magical 1950 recording of 11 Scarlatti sonatas by Clara Haskil. This was Haskil’s only solo album for Westminster and her first on LP, and although she was not well known at the time, her interpretative and artistic perfection makes this a classic of recorded pianism. It’s been reissued before as a supplement to the Philips Great Pianists set but this newly remastered version is much better. This disc also features three previously unissued Chopin mazurkas by Youra Guller, a shadowy figure with a cult following. The contrast with Haskil couldn’t be more pronounced: Guller’s playing is eccentric and mannered, interesting certainly but hardly essential.

Discs 6-9 feature the young Raymond Lewenthal recorded in 1955-56. Lewenthal was famed for his later RCA recordings of Alkan, and hearing him in Beethoven, Scriabin and other works he didn’t otherwise record is a revelation. Lewenthal was a stupendous pianist with a huge technique, colossal sonority and astonishing interpretative intelligence – his Appassionata on disc 6 is powerfully nuanced and Scriabin’s Op 11 Preludes on disc 7 demonstrate his exquisite colouring and technical control. Disc 8 is a collection of popular encores with some quirky arrangements by Lewenthal himself. A ‘best of’ collection might have been bread and butter for Westminster, but Lewenthal’s artistic integrity didn’t allow for hackneyed or routine playing – everything is considered and sensitively crafted. Disc 9 is a collection of toccatas from the Baroque to the 20th century, including a scintillating example alla Scarlatti by Lewenthal himself. This overlooked pianist shines in these early Westminster recordings.

Discs 10 and 11 feature another under-appreciated artist, Russian-born Nina Milkina – a Matthay pupil who broadcast regularly for the BBC in the 1950s and ’60s but made few commercial recordings. The Scarlatti album, although very different from Haskil’s, is exquisite in its clarity, crystalline tone and beauty of line, and her wonderfully manicured performances of four sonatas by CPE Bach were the first examples of these works on record. Discs 12-14 contain the last commercial recordings by Benno Moiseiwitsch, a giant among 20th-century pianists. After 44 years under contract with HMV, his final recordings were made in New York for American Decca in 1961. Aged 71, Moiseiwitsch’s distinguished career was coming to an end but he recorded three works that were new to his discography: Schumann’s Carnaval and Kreisleriana and Beethoven’s Les adieux. Moiseiwitsch might not have been the virtuoso he was in the 1930s and ’40s but he remained the master colourist, individual stylist and patrician performer of old. Everything he does is interesting, and he was still capable of pianistic fireworks when required.

A sensational 1963 recital by Guiomar Novaes, her only recording for American Decca, features on disc 15. From the ringing bass C sharp at the opening of Chopin’s Barcarolle to the final E major chord at the end of Liszt’s 10th Hungarian Rhapsody – every item here is astonishing. Her massive sonority and range of colour are miraculous and she approaches music by Chopin, Liszt and Debussy with interpretative ease and confidence. Discs 17-20 contain the last commercial recordings by the veteran pianist and Busoni disciple Egon Petri, captured in New York in June 1956. Among these are transcriptions by Liszt and Busoni, some of which Petri had recorded for Columbia in the 1930s and ’40s; comparing the 1936 Columbia account of the Gounod/Liszt Faust waltz with the 1956 Westminster reveals almost identical interpretations, proving that even in his 70s, Petri’s formidable intellect and technique were still in place. Historically significant is Petri’s recording of Busoni’s epic Fantasia contrappuntistica. Petri gave the premiere of the two-piano version with Busoni himself and probably no other pianist at the time knew this complex and difficult work better. Yet his performance is slightly disappointing: there is no doubting Petri’s intellectual and technical grasp of Busoni’s strange musical language but the ethereal quality is missing (a bright piano, dull acoustic and close mic placement don’t help). Finally, disc 21 contains a 1955 recital by another Busoni pupil, Carlo Zecchi, who when this album was recorded had all but abandoned a solo career in favour of conducting. Zecchi made a number of recordings in the 1930s, reissued on APR, but no further solo recordings after this Westminster recital, which is a pity because his playing is magical, particularly his subtle performance of Mozart’s D major Sonata, K311, and the stylish individualism of the two Chopin mazurkas.

Eloquence’s other Piano Library set is the 22-disc ‘Deutsche Grammophon Edition’, which as with the Westminster set is beautifully packaged in original jackets, but quite different in scope and content. DG has an active programme of reissuing material from its back catalogue by its stellar stable of pianists but Eloquence has cleverly found niches unlikely to appear under DG’s own branding. Ten discs are live recordings by competition winners, many of whom – with the exceptions of Vladimir Ashkenazy and Michel Block – made very few subsequent discs or in some cases died tragically early. Eight of these discs come from the short-lived ‘Concours’ series. The other 12 discs are either of pianists who recorded only one or two albums for DG – such as Erik Then-Bergh and Paul Baumgartner, in performances of Reger’s Telemann Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations respectively – or of more established names but in repertory with a more specialised appeal, such as sonatas by Boulez and Berg recorded by Claude Helffer or Roberto Szidon’s magisterial performance of Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata. In the case of the two Beethoven discs by Elly Ney (discs 15 and 16), once controversially billed as ‘Hitler’s pianist’, there may have been sensitivities that precluded a previous DG reissue, but these are powerful and perceptive performances, with only some sections of the Appassionata betraying Ney’s age (she was 74).

There are very few duplications in this set. Two discs of Dino Ciani – Debussy’s Préludes Book 1 and Children’s Corner and Weber’s Piano Sonatas Nos 2 and 3 – were issued on both DG and Brilliant Classics, who each reissued Ciani’s complete recordings. Ciani could well have been one of the finest pianists of his generation but he was killed in a road accident in 1974, aged 32. The Weber sonatas are particularly fine and his Debussy recordings have many admirers.

Some of the recordings taken from the ‘Concours’ series make for an uncomfortable listen, despite the palpable adrenalin of competition settings. But there are some standout performances, such as Youri Egorov’s Schumann Carnaval and the miraculous performances of Beethoven’s Eroica Variations and Schumann’s Études symphoniques by Steven de Groote. Egorov was another tragic loss, dying from complications of Aids in 1988 at the age of 33, while the South African de Groote died in 1989 at the age of 36 – de Groote’s disc is one of the highlights of this set and a fitting memorial to a pianist who clearly could have had a massive career. Also worthy of note are the Bach recordings by the American Zola Mae Shaulis – a prizewinner in three international competitions including the Washington Bach Competition who made only two discs for DG before dropping out of sight in the 1980s.

Presentation, documentation and engineering are superb throughout, with informative notes by Mark Ainley (Westminster/American Decca) and Jonathan Summers (DG). If I had to choose one for my Christmas stocking it would probably be the Westminster box, although I would be tempted to push the boat out and get both.

The Recordings

Piano Library: Westminster & American Decca Edition

Eloquence 484 3829 (21 CDs)

Piano Library: Deutsche Grammophon Edition

Eloquence 484 3089 (22 CDs)