Two-CD set from Monaco-based label Bel Air Music to celebrate its 15th anniversary

Original recordings all made in Russia featuring the second movements of works drawn from 18 different releases

Music almost exclusively from the classical and romantic periods – only Bach, Gershwin and Shostakovich stray outside these

All except two of the pieces are from concertos, the vast majority for piano, label founder Ole Jorgensen’s favourite musical form – they “often portray the most delicate beauty”

Slow movements of Borodin’s Second Symphony and Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony also feature

Composers include Mozart, Beethoven, Hummel, Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Anton Rubinstein

Among the artists are pianists Andrey Pisarev, Oxana Yablonskaya , Mira Yevtich, Natasha Paremski, Minkyung Cho, violinist Alexei Bruni and conductors A Tchistiakov, Oleg Poltevsky and Dmitri Yablonsky

All Russian orchestras, including the New Russia Orchestra (Mikhail Pletnev’s Russian National Orchestra in all but name), the Russian State Orchestra, and the Moscow Philharmonic