Bavarian-born Adolf von Henselt (1814⁠–⁠1889) was one of a galaxy of star pianist-composers of a similar age that included Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Thalberg. A student of Hummel, Henselt developed a breathtaking, idiosyncratic virtuoso technique but stage fright drew him away from performance and more towards composition and then teaching. Moving to St Petersburg in 1838, he established, with Anton Rubinstein, a truly Russian school of pianism. His piano works embrace ferocious technical studies as well as romantic salon pieces that led Schumann to dub Henselt ‘the Chopin of the North’.

Virtuoso pianist Ignaz Friedman’s (1882⁠–⁠1948) compositions have long been neglected but they possess great melodic beauty and harmonic inventiveness. Grouped into sets of character pieces, they exude the haunting melodies of late-Romanticism. The lush inventiveness of the Vier Klavierstücke, Op. 27 finds time for Polish folkloric inspiration whilst Stimmungen, Op. 79 – dedicated to his friend Rachmaninov – is pensive, passionate, serious and colourful. Strophes reflects Friedman’s love of Grieg, as well as the abiding influence of Vienna.

Józef (Josef) Hofmann (1876⁠–⁠1957) was one of the greatest Romantic virtuosi of his age, a towering technician and a poet of the keyboard. He also wrote extensively for the piano, crafting a richly contrasted set of Charakterskizzen, Op. 40, a Sonata in F major, Op. 21 that reveals the influence of Schumann, and a finely wrought Theme with Variations and Fugue, Op.14. Artem Yasynskyy won the Hofmann Prize at the First German Piano Competition of Polish Music in Hamburg in 2013.

Legendary pianist Alfred Cortot’s (1877⁠–⁠1962) distinguished reputation as an educator is demonstrated in these magnificent arrangements of chamber music for solo piano. They cover every aspect of technique and expression, from Bach’s demanding Toccata and Fugue in D minor to Fauré’s delectable Dolly Suite and the grand scale of Franck’s Violin Sonata. Award-winning pianist He Yue is a young and rising star of the Chinese musical firmament.

Like his near-contemporary Rachmaninov, who called him ‘the greatest composer of our time’, Nikolay Medtner (1880⁠–⁠1951) was a composer, pianist and an exile from his native Russia. His portfolio of works includes a remarkable series of pieces for his own instrument, including fourteen sonatas and some hugely evocative, deeply poetic miniatures. Medtner’s gift for melody is immediately discerned in the early Sonatina in G minor. The Sonata No. 1, Op. 5, his first large-scale work, enshrines autobiographical elements and is both intense and spiritually charged. Poetry and nostalgia flood the beautiful Sonata-Reminiscenza in A minor. This is the first volume of a complete cycle of the Medtner Piano Sonatas.