Byron Janis: “Live from Leningrad 1960” (available from www.byronjanislive.com). “The great American pianist is heard in a recital he gave in 1960 at the behest of President John F. Kennedy in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg,” says von Rhein. “According to Janis, he was unaware a recording had been made until a vinyl disc transfer sent by an anonymous source turned up in the mailbox of his sound engineer. The pianist is in peak form (his Chopin ‘Funeral March’ Sonata is positively hair-raising), and the restoration captures the frisson of a live performance the Russian audience obviously savored.”

Mr. Janis was the first American artist chosen to participate in the 1960 Cultural Exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union and was hailed on the front page of The New York Times as, "an ambassador in breaking down 'cold war' barriers." He was also the first American concert pianist to be asked back to Cuba, 40 years after his last performance there, during which time no American was allowed to perform on Cuban soil.

His many recordings appear on the RCA, Mercury Phillips and EMI labels. In the Spring of 2012, EMI released a Byron Janis "Chopin Collection," a compilation of his Chopin recordings featuring, for the first time on one CD, two unknown Chopin waltz manuscripts which he discovered at Yale University (the other two versions he discovered at the Chateau de Thoiry in France).