I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall not cease to glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish; -be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809-92) - After-thought

About Romantic Discoveries Recordings

We live in an age of mysteries. The omnipresence of today's recordings of classical music, many of which are of little-known repertoire, might lead us to believe that there is little left of the past to discover. Yet we have only to move back in time by a little over a hundred years to find the ghosts of a forgotten Romanticism waiting to be reanimated and to present to us an aesthetic very different from that of our own age. This was the era when the piano was at the centre of musical life; at the heart of the home and at the crux of the conception of the Romantic as artist.

Franz Liszt, "Mephistopheles disguised as an Abbé", was caught between the two extremes of heaven and hell in his output just as in his life. Frédéric Chopin's spontaneous poetic gifts were counterpointed by the tragedy of his illness and early death. Robert Schumann, once able to reconcile the two conflicting sides of his personality in the characters of Florestan and Eusebius, eventually descended into madness. These are the quintessential Romantics of legend. Yet these giants stood on the shoulders of others to whom history has been less kind. Many of those whose genius was for the miniature forms rather than the grandeur of symphonic composition have been dismissed and forgotten by our reductive age. Even such a familiar figure as Beethoven, whose Romantic sensibility towers over his successors, has left us still-forgotten corners of his output and some surprising discoveries to make.

It was in response to an awareness of the neglect of the lesser-known piano music of the Romantic era that the award-winning English concert pianist and musical historian John Kersey founded Romantic Discoveries Recordings. Romantic Discoveries Recordings is a small specialist independent recording label distinguished by its mission of making available hitherto unrecorded piano works of the nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries for the benefit of scholars and connoisseurs of this era alike.

Since its foundation, it has made available first recordings of Beethoven, Alkan, S.S. Wesley, Sir Frederic Cowen, Debussy and many more neglected composers, based on ongoing research in archives, among fellow enthusiasts, with the aid of antiquarian dealers and on dusty shelves wherever they are to be found. Inhabiting ground where the record industry and the musical establishment fear to tread as yet, it produces a steady stream of discs that aim to intrigue and entertain in equal measure.

The Romantic Discoveries project started life as an online archive of Mp3 files, developing into a series of commercial CD releases in response to demand. It has been featured on "This Week in Classical Music" with Randy Kinkel on KBAQ 89.5 FM (USA), on Laura Allen's show "Music in the Afternoon" on West Virginia Public Broadcasting Radio (USA), WCPE 89.7 FM Classical News (USA) and on NCRV Radio (Holland); in an article by Emily Quinn for Playbill Arts ("Unknown 19th Century Works Assembled in Internet Archive") and in the Chicago Chronicle.

From February 2005, John Kersey was Editor's Pick - Classical on CNET's Download.com highlighting his work in the Romantic Discoveries project, and featured in Vitaminic.co.uk's Spotlight for Classical/Instrumental. In March 2005 he was #3 in the Download.com chart for Classical – Solo Instrumental out of 42 artists.

To buy recordings on the Romantic Discoveries Recordings label, please click here.