Benno Moiseiwitch was one of the great pianists of the twentieth century. When in 1950 he played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 on his American tour, the music critic of the San Francisco News wrote: ‘Mr Moiseiwitsch played superbly and proved a veritable aristocrat of the keyboard… One has rarely heard such a command of tone colouring demonstrated by a keyboard artist’. The highlight of this 1938 recording of the Emperor, the work Moiseiwitch performed in London in March 1963 at his final public appearance, is the beautifully sustained slow movement, with legato passages of poignant beauty.