Starker is a superb musician and a master of his instrument. He has previously recorded some of the music on this disc, but these new performances sound better and are better. Mercury has wisely avoided the old echo-chamber manner of recording which made the early Starker discs sound as if they were played on one hundred cellos at once in the Moscow subway.

There is probably no cellist currently active who can draw the range of floating and resonant sounds even up into the top register as Starker can. Nor, for that matter, are there many who can do all this with such musical integrity. He challenges memories of the fabled Feuermann, and his performance of the Chopin Polonaise brillante comes as close to the old Feuermann performance as any now available. Gyorgy Sebok is an admirable partner. (Hi-Fi Review)

180g Audiophile Virgin Vinyl

From the Original Masters of Universal Music

Audiophile Analog Mastering by Rainer Maillard at Emil Berliner Studios

Pressed at Optimal Media GmbH in Germany

Obi Strip

Import

Musicians

Janos Starker cello

Gyorgy Sebok piano

Selections

Side A:

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) - Variations concertantes

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) - Variations on a Theme of Rossini

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) - Polonaise brillante

Side B:

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) - Sonata in D minor

Bela Bartok (1881-1945) - First Rhapsody

Leo Weiner (1885-1960) - Hungarian Wedding Dance