Geoffrey Gaskell wrote in an enthusiastic vein:

>I have lately acquired a variety of HIP recordings:
>
>1.  The Bilson/Gardiner Mozart Piano Concerto Series.

I envy Geoffrey's discovery of these performances.  Until I heard them,
Mozart piano concertos were smooth, poetic, and beautiful.  Bilson and
Gardiner made them exciting, contrasting, and full of additional insights.
I love both approaches and am routinely snapping up recordings of each.

Geoffrey indicated that his past purchases of HIP recordings were mainly
of the baroque period, but that he's forging ahead with HIP acquistions
of early romantic works.  Try out HIP on the Beethoven cello sonatas and
Schubert piano trios.  There's quite a difference and plenty of HIP
recordings to choose from.  For the Beethoven cello sonatas, my favorites
are Coin/Cohen on Harmonia Mundi and the new Blysma/Immerseel set on Sony.
For Schubert's piano trios, I favor Immerseel/Beths/Blysma on Sony and,
particularly, La Gaia Scienza on Winter & Winter.  These are superlative
performances, and I gained a whole new appreciation of D.  929.  You do
have to buy two separate discs to get both trios (each has a coupling), but
it was easily worth the cost.  Hell, knowing how good they are, I'd pay
$100 to have them if need be.  There's even a super budget set of the trios
that's excellent - Florestan on Discover International.  And all three of
these came out within 2 years of each other.

The one particular early romantic genre not well covered at all on HIP
recordings are Beethoven's and Schubert's string quartets.  I expect that
to be remedied very soon; I consulted my TV psychic who assured me that I
would be enjoying these works on HIP recordings within one year.  They
always predict great things for me.  I think they are all HIP fans.

Don Satz
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