Emil Gilels - The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collection

Among the first Soviet musicians allowed to travel in the West, Emil Gilels s American debut on October 3, 1955, with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra caused a sensation. Later that month, Gilels recorded his best-selling collaboration with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky s First Piano Concerto. Subsequent American tours between 1958 and 1965 yielded a small yet select group of recordings for the two leading American classical labels, RCA and Columbia, including the Brahms Second Concerto with Reiner/Chicago, and the Chopin First Concerto with Ormandy/Philadelphia. Among Gilels Bach, Liszt, Schubert and Shostakovich solo recordings for RCA, the Schubert A minor Sonata, D 784, is being released for the first time on CD. In 1979 Gilels returned to the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and its music director Zubin Mehta for a televised Pension Fund Benefit Concert, subsequently issued as one of the first CBS digitally recorded releases.