Schubert Bi-centennial

This is the 1983 debut album of Joan Rowland and Karl Ulrich Schnabel as Duo Schnabel. Schubert's Grand Duo is a towering masterpiece for one piano, four hands. The work has the proportions and the quality of a major symphony. It is surely no less important than any of Schubert's symphonies, and the Duo Schnabel performs the piece in this recording with an orchestral approach, without sacrificing the pianistic sonorities. The Variations in B flat are light-hearted, charming, and brilliantly conceived for the piano.

Winner of international prizes in Darmstadt and Salzburg, Joan Rowland gave her first performance with the Toronto Symphony at the age of eleven. Since then, she has given countless solo and orchestral concerts in the United States, Canada, and Europe. A specialist in romantic repertoire, she presents on this recording the most important of Schumann's piano music.

Prize winner in the Viennese International Piano Competition, Sofia Cosma's promising career was tragically interrupted by arbitrary imprisonment of seven years in a Stalinist labor camp. She resumed her career in mid-life to become the most celebrated pianist in Romania. This CD, her first American recording, is presented in celebration of her eightieth birthday.

The vitality and playfulness of the jazz era is captured in this collection of novelty piano solos composed by colleagues of George Gershwin. Pianist Lincoln Mayorga's light-spirited and virtuosic playing brings life to this rarely recognized American genre of music. Included on the Compact Disc is a nineteenth century precursor of the novelty piano solo, Louis Moreau Gottschalk's "The Banjo".

Solo piano music from the motion picture "The Competition," starring Richard Dreyfus and Amy Irving, performed by sound track artist Lincoln Mayorga. This collection includes original piano music written for the film by composer Lalo Schifrin.