I picked up a few discounted CDs at Tower's sale last weekend.  When I got
home I discovered that w/ one exception (the Barbirolli Mahler 5) my CDs
were all piano music some containing delightful surprises.

Perhaps my favorite among these acquisitions was Olli Mustonen performing
various short Beethoven pieces (dances, variations, bagatelles) on London
452 206-2.  I bought it because I remember enjoying his performance of
the piano version of Beethoven's Violin concerto.  My instincts proved
well founded.  The music simply sparkles, the rapid piano passages often
sounding like plucked strings (actually like a pizzicato, not like a harp)
and this on what seems to be a conventional piano, not a fortepiano and
certainly not a harpsichord.

Another delight was a 2-CD album of Bach keyboard music.  The first CD
has Rosalyn Tureck playing the Italian Concerto and various shorter pieces,
some of which I hadn't heard since my daughter prematurely abandoned music
lessons.  A pleasant disc, but overshadowed, IMO, by the second in the set,
which has Charles Rosen playing The Art of the Fugue w/ Olsen Archers
joining him in the Contrapunctus XIII a 3 inversus & rectus and
Contrpunctus XII a 4 rectus & inversus, ending w/ the Contrapunctus XIV,
eerily cut short in mid theme by the composer's death.  Up to now, my
favorite rendition of The Art of the Fugue has been that of Janos Rolla
and the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchester.  This Rosen/Archer piano version
has become a close rival.

I also got another Tureck recording, "A Tribute to a Keyboard Legend" (VAIA
1086), Schubert's Sonatas No.  17 in D (D850) and No.  2 in C (D279) played
by Martino Tirimo (EMI 7243 5 66128 2 2), which I bought because of the
price, as I'd never heard of the pianist.  It was dollars and 70+ minutes
well spent.

As a novelty, I got the giveaway priced 2-CD album of Philips' sampler of
the Great Pianists of the 20th Century collection.  They even threw in a
hard cover booklet.  So far as I'm concerned, it's a novelty only.  I think
all of the pieces were complete, but of necessity, short, and as the music
moved from track to track, I could rarely detect a difference in the
respective pianists.  With this confession, I will no doubt have forfeited
any vestige of credibility in my judgment of what I've been hearing.

Walter Meyer