Byron Janis (1928-2024) was an American pianist, one of the major American keyboard virtuosos of the twentieth century. A pupil of Vladimir Horowitz, he was admired for power, brilliance and Romantic command.

In the Pristine catalogue he appears in Richard Strauss under Fritz Reiner, in a programme drawn from Reiner’s American orchestral recordings.

Janis’s pianism had voltage and scale, but also a strongly sculpted sense of line. He belonged to a virtuoso tradition that still expected drama to have architectural bones.

His page is justified by stature even from a compact catalogue footprint. Janis brings a grand piano clang with a flash of Horowitzian lightning behind it.