Saw him in recital at Concertgebouw when he was 89!!!… stunning sounds and colours… a glimpse into pianist art from another era… quite the antithesis of the muppet J-lo

Have Earl Wild doing the Gian Carlo Menotti Piano Concerto on a Vanguard release. A work that should be heard more often. The second movement is a real tear jerker. The opening of the first movement almost sounds like a Take-Off of that Nazi theme that Shostakovich uses in his Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad) Of course this could only be the way I hear it. THANKS DAVE !!!

7:37 the Nocturnes are not played in chronological order, but organised according to "mood, key and effect" per the booklet. The result is an absolutely gorgeous recital. Brilliant Classics released the recording under license a few years ago, which can be easier to find in Europe than the original Ivory Classics version.

"The Virtuoso Piano," which Wild did for Vanguard, came to me through the Columbia Record Club, introducing me to that kind of piano music.

… and if memory serves, Mr. Wild was the Musical Director of the Zacherley TV program (you can hear his piano accompaniment to Zach’s opera, “Il Draculare“).

I've always regarded Earl Wild very highly, although I don't have many of his recordings. It's a shortcoming I should address.

A brilliant collection of CDs, I also have them all along with a few others like the Rachmaninov preludes and 2nd sonata. I had a few Chesky CDs also. For some reason the Rach concertos ended up on Chandos?! Anyway, he was a fantastic pianist both in solo works and concertos, his Pictures is my reference recording. You're right about Hamelin being of the same mould, Stephen Hough is also.

He headed the piano program at Ohio State University, which is where I work (albeit in a very different department). I only met him once when he gave a recital in the late '80s. I'm particularly fond of his Demonic Liszt album. Caroline Hong now heads OSU's piano program and is worth checking out as well. She's recorded all the Carl Vine sonatas fantastically for Fleur de Son Classics. She's also on the American Liszt Society's governing board.

No doubt about it, Earl Wild was the greatest American pianist for all time. His range was just incredible. And whoever writes a Toccata a la Ricky Martin? His autobiography was a complete bitchfest. The first chapter to read was his unvarnished opinion of Isaac Stern, called No Stern Unstoned or something like that!

I really enjoy hearing you talk about artists that I haven't heard of. One you don't hear much about now is Werner Haas, I have a dramatic recording he did of the Tchaikovsky piano concertos but he seems to have sunk without a trace

Perhaps one day you could do a review of Reynaldo Hahn's 2 Concertos, each for Piano & Violin.

At one time Earl Wild recorded excellent piano performances that RCA made on behalf of Readers' Digest (yes, those guys) who wanted to sell classical music to its middlebrow subscribers. RCA then had Cliburn and Rubinstein under contract and wasn't going to let some third party release those. So people getting those music collections from Reader's Digest got those diamonds instead. It was a surprising bargain in the LP era.

Wild was one of the few pianists who understood Rachmaninov's elusive 3rd Piano Concerto. There's a disc with the 2nd and 3rd and it's fabulous. His Gershwin was great too. A pity none of these in its entirety is included in this set.

Love Earl Wild. May have misunderstood you, but Chesky Records is still in business.

Sir, are you interested in a little talk about Hyperion's Bach Transcription series for the Piano? There are some nuggets in there (Vol.1, 3, 5, 7, 9 & 10 for me) and the series - as a whole - is certainly worth a listen.