John Kersey's Romantic Discoveries piano CDs now on YouTube

[Mark Thomas]

Some members may be aware of the Romantic Discoveries series of unsung piano music CD-Rs produced (and played) by John Kersey. These feature many major and minor works by mostly 19th century unsung composers, with a particularly extensive selection of piano sonatas. They are now all available on YouTube here, and Kersey explains the reasons for this move in his blog post here, in which he also confirms that he will continue to make new recordings but post them exclusive on his YouTube channel. His playing style is often rather four square, literal and dynamically unvaried, but there can be no doubt that over recent years Kersey has explored the byways of 19th century piano music like few others and on his channel one can find such interesting works as the eight piano sonatas of Eduard Franck, or the eleven of Rudolf Viole, and we should be really grateful to him for that.

FWIW, I've found that, if one has the audio software to do it, the flatter performances can be injected with a lot more life by speeding things up by 5-10% (being careful to maintain the original pitch), but in any event it's a great bonus that these works can be heard at all, all the more so when it's free to do so. 

[semloh]

Thank you for drawing attention to this, Mark. There's so much to enjoy at the YT site.