This latest issue in APR's ongoing French Piano School series is perhaps the most important yet.

The set brings together some of the earliest and rarest piano recordings ever made, not just in France, but worldwide, and includes the complete solo recordings of all the pianists featured except Wurmser. Many are reissued for the first time.

The French office of the Gramophone Company was a pioneer in bringing serious artists into the studio and the results are a legacy of the utmost historical importance. So too are the early Fonotipia recordings of the only Herz pupil to record, Roger-Miclos, and the later Columbia electric recordings of Plante, made in his 90th year. With Saint-Saens, Diemer and Plante we can hear pianists who were born in the first half of the 19th century - a unique window into the past.

The latest digital technology has been applied throughout and, amongst other improvements, we are now able to hear Pugno's wonderful recordings, hitherto flawed by a notorious vibrato caused by the unstable recording turntable used in 1903, with their pitch stabilized.