Gottschalk: Piano Music for 2 and 4 hands

Disc 2 of this new collection, the solo piano pieces, has been doing good service for well over a decade. Marks plays a good variety of Gottschalk music, sparkles in the virtuoso pieces, and even manages to keep a straight face when he plays sentimental tripe like "The Last Hope" and "The Dying Poet." As the only important composer produced by the U.S. in the 19th century, Gottschalk still deserves our attention, and his folk-influenced pieces are still fun to hear. Oddly, the four-hand piano recording is inferior to the solo piano disc; it sounds thin and shrill, evidently not the pianists' fault since Marks plays with beautiful tone in his solo disc. Also, more of this music comes from Gottschalk's sentimental salon style, making the program a bit less attractive. But there is still a lot of fun to be had, especially in the concluding "Grande Tarantelle." So, if you regard disc 1 as a free bonus and disc 2 as the real matter, you're definitely getting your money's worth here. --Leslie Gerber Amazon.com