Early Recordings Vol.3

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These outstanding early Gilels SU recordings present a splendid group of the composer’s widely contrasting moods. Gilels was a true virtuoso in the Lisztian tradition, combining musical integrity with rarely equalled technique.
The superb Liszt-Busoni Fantasia - "Fantasy on Themes from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni (Le Nozze Di Figaro)" - was one of his finest works with which he won the First Soviet All-Union Competition in 1933, while his recordings of the Hungarian Rhapsodies and three works by Chopin are full of character and personality.
Only few pianists have possessed a more comprehensive, magisterial technique or musical integrity than Emil Gilels. Highly recommended.

Early Recordings Vol.2

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In large-scale sonatas by Glazunov, Medtner and Prokofiev, his playing glows with conviction and includes passagework spun off with an all-Russian legato.
Then, his outwardly formidable and unsmiling demeanour on the concert platform is erased in a performance of Tchaikovsky's "Chant sans paroles" of a beguiling charm.
Here was a real artist, and a real communicator. Highly recommended.

Early Recordings Vol.1

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Here, in performance after performance, is the sort of playing that made Rubinstein, on hearing the teenage Gilels in Russia, exclaim, 'if that boy ever comes to America I might as well pack my bags and retire'. Even in dated sound an 'elemental virtuoso gift' and a 'sonority rich in noble metal' are omnipresent.
And whether you hear Gilels in his exquisite Rameau, the thunderous brilliance of his Godowsky or in the way his decorations in Smetana's A minor Polka shimmer like the beating of a hummingbird's wings, you will hear a nonpareil pianism.
True, in years to come Gilels would find greater depth than his enviably spruce and immaculately turned Mozart conveys, but even here the playing is of an aristocratic distinction and finesse. Highly recommended.