in 1961, Ravel's Jeux d'eau and Alborada del gracioso for Christophorus and Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy and Beethoven's Eroica Variations. Ponti was noted for his wide-ranging recordings of the unknown romantic repertoire on the Vox and Candide labels. He recorded a series of concertos, many of which had never been recorded before, and some of which have been unrecorded since. The series with Vox of around 50 recordings began in 1968 with a recording of the Piano Concerto No 3 and some etudes by Ignaz Moscheles, followed the same month by Adolf von Henselt's Piano Concerto and etudes. He was the first to record Charles-Valentin Alkan's Concerto da camera No. 2 in 1979. Composers of the series also included Mily Balakirev, Moritz Moszkowski, Hans Bronsart von Schellendorff, Clara Schumann and Sigismond Thalberg. He included works by Eugen d'Albert, William Berwald, Alexander Glazunov, Hermann Goetz, Ferdinand Hiller, Henry Litolff, Sergei Lyapunov, Nikolai Medtner, Joachim Raff, Carl Reinecke, Anton Rubinstein, Xaver Scharwenka, Christian Sinding, Bernhard Stavenhagen and Karl Tausig. In addition, he was the first to record the complete piano music of Scriabin, much of which was otherwise unavailable then, though it has since been recorded by Vladimir Ashkenazy, Piers Lane and others. He was again first to record the complete piano music of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. With the Ponti-Zimansky-Polasek Trio, he recorded chamber music by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. He was the accompanist of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in a recording of songs by Charles Ives. His output amounts to more than 80 discs, and many of his recordings have been re-issued on CD, such as seven volumes of The Romantic Piano Concerto. References Further reading Michael Stegemann: M. Ponti, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 144, 1983, H. 1, pp. 19–22 : Klavierspiel als Lebensaufgabe – Romantik als Lebenswerk – Virtuosität als Lebenslast. Michael Ponti, dem fabelhaften Pianisten und frühen Archäologen der Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts zum 80. Geburtstag. In: Musik in Baden-Württemberg. 2017/18, vol.. 24, edited by Bärbel Pelker, Stuttgart 2018, pp. 303–309 External links Michael Ponti (Piano) Bach Cantatas Website 1937 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century American pianists 20th-century German male classical pianists 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century German male classical pianists American classical pianists American male classical pianists Classical pianists who played with one arm German classical pianists Musicians from Freiburg im Breisgau