Looking for well recorded great piano on CD's

Hi, For a good recorded jazz piano album you may want to check out Hommage by Andrew Hill. It's on the test of time label.

Well recorded great pianos...
I always favored Werner Haas who unfortunately died in his 30's from a bike accident. There are a few recordings that are incredibly good, even though they were recorded 30 years ago...

I would check "Hommage a Werner Haas" - it is a low cost 5 cd set, covering a lot of his work. There is some background hiss, but overall it sounds excellent, with very good dynamics and awesome tone.
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=19331

There is also a Pentatone recording that I highly recommend- it is a Hybrid SACD, so it will play fine on your CD player, but it's worth having the SACD tracks as those recordings were made by Philips in 4 channels.
http://www.pentatonemusic.com/index.htm?pags/r%20sampler%20044.htm~rechts

Happy listening!

For classical, Volados playing Schubert is a no-brainer! Great Schubert and an excellent recording as well. Also, Paul Jacobs playing Debussy's Preludes on Non-such.

And, for some thing really different, but very well done, are two albums from Telarc called "A Window in Time" which are music by, or transcribed by, Rachmaninoff and played by Rachmaninoff. They are taken from piano rolls and electronically recreated on a Bosendorfer piano. Excellent music/recording. You wouldn't know it wasn't recorded in a studio.

Sorry, no Jazz reco's. Got tons of it but can't think of any that I would classify as a 'great'(audiophile type) recordings, although some of the performances are priceless.

I enjoy George Winston, "Plains" is good.

I'll second Volodos for someone / something new. I have his recital CD and the Rach 3.

For something old that sounds good considering; I have enjoyed the series of historical releases under the Great Pianists of the 20th Century series.

They are mostly old analog recordings , but I feel they've done a very good job overall transferring them to digital. There are also the occassion live concert recording thrown in that have never been heard before on any format, which is a real treat.

For jazz piano I would recommend these:

Ahmad Jamal, "Cross Country Tour"

almost anything by Bill Evans, especially "Sunday at the Village Vanguard"

early McCoy Tyner

Billy Taylor, "Ten Fingers, One Voice"

All of the SACD hybrids from Bill Evans are worth owning.

I enjoy Stereophile's boxed set of Beethoven's sonotas. Should be a link and review on their site.

Try the Stereophile Magazine recordings, they are super clean and bring out the best and worst of your system.

Here's a few classical for you:

Pletnev at Carnegie Hall is a great live recording.
Volodos also has some great recordings - I have the listen to the Schubert frequently for some reason.
The Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould remastered as a double album of two distinctive performances decades apart and each quite distinctive.

Marco