Described by The Australian as ‘a boon for lovers of the piano and those keeping an ear on exciting musical talent’, the Sydney International Piano Competition (The Sydney) has become a fixture on the classical music landscape.

This unique retrospective chronicles more than 100 fascinating performances. They were recorded by 77 pianists during seven events over two decades (1992-2016).

Over its 14 hours, the eleven CDs in this Limited Edition encompass music by more than 55 composers from Agnew to Zaderetsky and the anthology is organised in seven categories: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Twentieth Century, Transcriptions & Encores, Australian Piano Music and Piano Concertos. Anyone who has followed The Sydney will recognise the excitement, the fever pitch as this great quadrennial festival of pianism heads towards the final rounds.

This set provides the listener then with a cornucopia of pianism. You can hear lyrical grace in so many of the Scarlatti sonatas, and particularly Rustem Khairutdinov’s 1992 performance of the D minor, K9. Poise and rapt stillness informs Roberto Cominati’s 1996 Debussy (Images, Book II), and the clarity of voicing is carried through in his performance of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, where you’re swept away with the excitement, but hear all the notes!

Excitement is to be found on virtually each disc in the set, but particularly in the ‘Transcriptions & Encores’ volume, as well as in the Rachmaninov and Sancan performances by Olivier Cazal, Yuki Takao’s Hexentanz (Macdowell), and Tatiana Kolesova’s Petrushka pieces. The anthology also gives us the opportunity to experience Australian piano music as interpreted by a range of pianists from, among others, countries like Russia, Canada, China, the United States, Sweden and Japan (and, of course, Australia).

The booklet includes full recording details, and introduction by The Sydney’s chairman Virginia Braden, and notes by Piers Lane (Artistic Director of The Sydney), and Cyrus Meher-Homji, who initiated a long-running series of recordings from The Sydney from 1992 onwards and curated this boxed set.

Contents:

CD 1: BAROQUE
- J.S. Bach, Scarlatti, Handel, Bach/Busoni
CD 2: CLASSICAL
- Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert
CD 3: THE ROMANTICS
- Brahms, Chopin, Granados, Liszt
CD 4: ROMANTICS cont.
- Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Schumann, Taneyev
CD 5: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
- Berg, Copland, Debussy, Fabregas, Ginastera
CD 6: 20th CENTURY cont.
- Kapustin, Ligeti, Menotti, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Ravel, Scriabin
CD 7: 20th CENTURY cont.
- Shchedrin, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Zaderatsky
CD 8: TRANSCRIPTIONS & ENCORES
- Balakirev, Gluck/Sgambati, J. Strauss/Schulz-Evler, Liszt, Macdowell, etc.
CD 9: AUSTRALIAN PIANO MUSIC
- Agnew, Benjamin, Carr-Boyd, Dean
CD 10: PIANO CONCERTOS
- Liszt
CD 11: PIANO CONCERTOS cont.
- Rachmaninov, Prokofiev