Essential Piano (Greatest Hits)

The Polish composer Fr‚d‚ric Chopin is acknowledged as one of the finest composers of piano music and some of his best-loved works are in this collection, including his brilliant Waltz No.1, heard in the film The Hudsucker Proxy, the dazzling "Minute" Waltz and the superb Fantaisie-impromptu. Beethoven is another of the great composers for the piano, and his two most popular piano solos - Fr Elise and the Moonlight Sonata - are both heard here. Other composers represented are Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninov, Debussy, Ravel, Faur‚ and Satie. The collection ends with the massive "Great Gate at Kiev" from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky played by Alexis Weissenberg. Other pianists include Martha Argerich, Aldo Ciccolini, Ingrid Fliter, Andrei Gavrilov, Stephen Kovacevich, John Ogdon, Garrick Ohlsson, Mikhail Pletnev and Christian Zacharias.