Music to my ears

Martin James Bartlett Pianist

Something that always turns up when I put my music on shuffle is Shura Cherkassky’s recording of Schulz-Evler’s Concert Arabesques on themes by Johann Strauss ‘The Beautiful Blue Danube’. It was one of the first classical piano recordings I ever heard, and it transformed my perception of the piano as a box of hammers to this glittering, capricious and witty thing – imagine all the beauty and excitement from the Vienna New Year’s Day concert condensed into one piano piece.

I don’t always listen to piano music, though. One piece I often return to is Saint-Saëns’s Symphony. There’s a recording conducted by Charles Munch, when he had just started