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Introducing Issue No. 9 – Winter 2024
Editor’s Desk

Introducing Issue No. 9 – Winter 2024

Welcome to the winter issue. I am very pleased to introduce two new contributors to Liner Notes, the first being Phillip Nones, the leading authority on a still under-rated composer, Florent Schmitt. In Part I of a series, he surveys the most important 78rpm recordings of this enigmatic composer’s fascinating […]



Casals in Rehearsal at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona Photo by Carlos Pérez de Rozas (1920-1990)

Orquestra Pau Casals (1920-1939)

In an infamous radio broadcast from Seville on 17 July 1936, Franco’s brutal henchman and chief propagandist Gonzalo Queipo de Lano y Serra, one of the so-called ‘Four Insurgent Generals’, issued a grisly death warrant: “I will tell you what I will do to him if I catch him. I will put an end to […]

Bringing composers to life

monthly composer features

Rediscovering great artists

monthly artist features

Fry with the LCO

Tristan Fry: 60 Percussive Years

“He’s a phenomenon – unlike anyone else”  In 1967 I had just begun timpani and percussion lessons at Trinity College of Music with one of the most venerated players and teachers in the UK music profession. Lewis Pocock had been Principal Percussion and then Principal Timpani in Sir Thomas Beecham’s famous virtuoso Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, […]

Recording Reviews

Kubelik in Lucerne

Rafael Kubelík in Lucerne 

Rafael Kubelík in Lucerne  New Philharmonia Orchestra/ Rafael Kubelik Audite 95.745 [2 CDS: 84:30]Available on CD — click here to purchase.  Immediately after the Russian suppression of Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring” in the summer of 1968, Rafael Kubelík (1914-1996), now an émigré living in his adapted city of Lucerne in Switzerland, organized for 8 September 1968 […]
Read More Rafael Kubelík in Lucerne 
Chopin Recital Jose Iturbi

Jose Iturbi: Chopin Recital 

Jose Iturbi: Chopin Recital  Forgotten Records FR 2066 [42:09] Available on CD — click here to purchase.  Valencia-born pianist Jose Iturbi (1896-1980) will likely suffer permanent denigration for his Hollywood connection that began in 1943 and extended to 1949. But despite his concession to popular taste, Iturbi remained a formidable musician of power and persuasion, […]
Read More Jose Iturbi: Chopin Recital 
Lazar Berman, piano Vol. 8

Lazar Berman, piano – Vol. 8 

Lazar Berman, piano – Vol. 8  Yves St-Laurent YSL 1215T [60:55] Available on CD — click here to purchase.  Leningrad-born Lazar Berman (1930-2005) studied with Alexander Goldenweiser at the Moscow Conservatory; and long before his arrival In the West at venues like Carnegie Hall and 92 Street Y, he had been touted by luminaries Emil […]
Read More Lazar Berman, piano – Vol. 8 
Charles Reiner, piano Vol. 2

Charles Reiner, piano, Vol. 2 

Charles Reiner, piano, Vol. 2  Yves St-Laurent YSL T-1230 (2 CDS 93:55) Available on CD — click here to purchase.  While Yves St-Laurent advertises discs devoted to the distinguished Canadian pianist and pedagogue Charles Reiner (1924-2006), it becomes obvious that the spotlight falls upon Polish-Mexican violin virtuoso Henryk Szeryng (1918-1988), with whom Reiner collaborated for many […]
Read More Charles Reiner, piano, Vol. 2 

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Our Authors

Alan Sanders

David Patmore

David Patmore

Gary Lemco

Dr. Gary Lemco

Pianist Ernest So

Ernest So

Jon Tolansky

Jon Tolansky

Joseph A. Moore

Joseph A. Moore

Lani Spahr

Lani Spahr

Leslie Gerber current

Leslie Gerber

Michael White

Nils-Göran Olve

Nils-Göran Olve

Robert Braine

Robert Braine

Roger Pines

Roger Pines

Sophia Singer

Sophia Singer

Thomas Wolf

Thomas Wolf

Wilhelm Backhaus

Wilhelm Backhaus