To all his many fans this disc is going to be 'The Best Marc-André Hamelin Album Ever' or perhaps 'The Ultimate Marc-André Album'.

The CD is a collection of the kind of wild and wacky encores that so typify Marc-André's recitals. Some are fairly well known such as the Rachmaninov and Godowsky but most are gems that have been long forgotten or, in the case of Marc's own studies, or the Kapustin, are new additions to the encore tradition. All are guaranteed to make the listener either gasp in astonishment or swoon. Look out for the Gimpel paraphrase on a tune known in the US as The Marines Hymn, this is in the tradition of Horowitz at his most brilliant; then there's our title track Kaleidoscop, written and made famous by the great pianist Joseph Hofmann, it was also much championed by Cherkassky and is another tour de force. Marc-André himself is represented by his outrageously complex take on Liszt's La Campanella and by his pastiche of a Scarlatti sonata, which is very silly indeed! But it's not all bravura, our pianist has also made an arrangement of the well known Adagio from Glazunov's The Seasons which may bring a tear to the eye, as may the nostalgia of Alt Wein. Unmissable!