Olga Samaroff and Frank La Forge – two names which I suspect will be unfamiliar to many readers. Almost exact contemporaries (1880-1948 and 1879-1953 respectively), they were the pre-eminent American-born pianists of the acoustic recording era. Samaroff, born Lucy Mary Agnes Hickenlooper, was a pupil in Paris of Alkan’s illegitimate son Élie-Miriam Delaborde. She was a true virtuoso with a huge repertoire (in the 1920s she programmed a nearly complete cycle of Beethoven’s keyboard works years before Schnabel). She retired after a shoulder injury in 1926 and, unable to hold her place at the top table, faded from view all too early.

Here, in really quite exceptional sound for the era (1921 24), is the first complete collection of Samaroff’s recordings. ‘The Art of Olga Samaroff’ (OPALCD9860), issued in 1996, contained all but two titles (in fine transfers). APR has used these tracks (further restored by Andrew Hallifax) and added the missing two: Grieg’s Nocturne, Op 54 No 4, and Schumann’s Romance, Op 28 No 2. I do hope that pianophiles can get past the surface noise and not let that colour your opinion of Samaroff’s playing. True, the acoustic process does not favour pieces with quieter dynamics (Chopin Nocturne, Clair de lune etc) and the seven sides she made before 1922 were made on an out-of-tune upright (after that she brought in her own grand), but you can still appreciate what a rich and varied piano tone she produced in performances of grace and musicality. When it comes to bravura works, I think you will be astonished. The finale of Chopin’s B minor Sonata, so elegantly phrased, is taken at a true presto non tanto, while Moszkowski’s Étincelles is up there with Horowitz. And if you think Liszt’s Liebestraum No 3 is corny and hackneyed, then listen to Samaroff. Why does no one else play it like this, so ardently passionate yet quite unsentimental? Most remarkable of all is the performance of Ernest Hutcheson’s ingenious arrangement of Ride of the Valkyries, tossed off in a single take in 1922, a scarcely credible feat of fearless dexterity. I still think, as I did back in the day when I first encountered it on an RCA LP (‘Keyboard Giants of the Past, Vol 2’ – 11/66), that it is one of the great acoustic piano recordings. The bonus of four electrical sides from 1930, including Samaroff’s own transcription of the ‘Little’ Fugue in G minor, BWV578, is the cherry on the cake.

I cannot raise quite the same level of enthusiasm for the 17 La Forge tracks, all dating from before the First World War, where the piano tone is more of an issue. Best to look at it from the point of view of ‘interesting repertoire’, for there are few other recordings of MacDowell’s Étude de concert, Op 36, dashingly executed, or Le papillon (another ‘étude de concert’) by the obscure Canadian Calixa Lavallée (1842 91 – who composed his country’s national anthem); nor, indeed, of the four salon-type compositions by La Forge himself. There’s a beautifully played Chopin D flat Nocturne with embellishments inherited from his teacher Leschetizky but I shall not be returning to the three early attempts to record the piano and orchestra (1911 and 1912). The last is barely recognisable as the vivace section of Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy. It was, quite sensibly, unissued on 78s and should have been reassigned at birth as a drinks coaster.

Needless to say, APR’s annotation, presentation and booklet are of the high standard required by serious collectors who are, once again, indebted to Mike Spring, the label’s CEO, for returning these historically important recordings to the catalogue.