This release by the 97-year-old pianist Ruth Slenczynska received plenty of publicity, understandably enough, and it landed on the best-seller charts in March of 2022. Slenczynska did not emerge from nowhere as a kind of old-age prodigy; she taught for many years at Southern Illinois University, wrote a raft of articles about piano pedagogy, and made some recordings, including a group for Deutsche Grammophon when she was in her eighties. As a child, Slenczynska studied with Alfred Cortot, Artur Schnabel, Josef Hofmann, and Sergei Rachmaninov, and she is the last living student of the latter. This alone makes the album worth one's while, for it offers a direct link to Rachmaninov's own playing. Slenczynska leads off with a pair of Rachmaninov works, and she produces, or reproduces, a distinctive style, with lots of rubato on the small scale but not the large. She transfers it to other works where it is appropriate, like a pair by Barber. There are also Chopin, Grieg, Debussy, and finally Bach, and there are very few places where one is aware that one is dealing with a 97-year-old; Slenczynska knows her limitations, and only the Chopin Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49, is close to the edge. A charming bit of trivia is that the producer of the album, David Frost, is the son of Thomas Frost, who produced Slenczynska's first release for the Decca label in 1956. This may not be Slenczynska's final release, either; she is said to have signed a new deal with Decca. Whatever the case, it is an important historical document.