Vladimir Ashkenazy: Complete Chamber Music & Lieder Recordings CD / Box Set

Complementing Decca's sets devoted to Vladimir Ashkenazy's concerto recordings and solo piano repertoire, this 51-CD limited edition set documents his chamber music and lieder recordings, ranging from his earliest (1966) - and one of his most eclectic single-disc collections, with pianist Malcolm Frager in the company of Barry Tuckwell and others - to his last, with principal cellist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Catherine Hewgill in 2016, neatly bookending half a century of music - making with collaborators. Accompanied by a note of great authenticity by his friend and producer Jeremy Hayes, this is a collection born of the deepest involvement with the music and musicians, and as one of Brahms's friends once remarked in another context 'as if all the instruments were in love with each other'. Fast-forwarding nearly two centuries, Time magazine heralded the first of these chamber music records, the Mozart and Schumann with Frager and friends as 'the proof of such harmony in friendship' - which just about sums up the Ashkenazy ethos.