For a pianist who is held in such high esteem by cognoscenti, Josef Lhévinne recorded little, even by comparison with other great artists from the pre-high-fi days of yore such as Ignaz Friedman, Josef Hofmann, and Moriz Rosenthal. The sparseness of his recorded legacy is perhaps partly attributable to his uncompromising perfectionism, coupled with a diffident personality that lacked the chutzpah of a more aggressively self-promoting performer like Vladimir Horowitz or Arthur Rubinstein. In addition, Lhévinne’s career as a soloist was sometimes overshadowed by his reputation as a pedagogue with a long-standing teaching position at the Juilliard School alongside his wife Rosina. (Among the Lhévinnes’ more notable students were Van Cliburn, Adele Marcus, and John Browning.) Nowadays even some of his more devoted admirers seem to forget that Lhévinne was also once a traveling concert artist with a hectic touring schedule. [Continue reading . . .]