Carl Maria von Weber wrote music that has been admired by composers as diverse as Schumann, Berlioz, Ravel, and Stravinsky. In his lifetime, Weber was also recognized as one of the finest pianists of the period, with an exceptional technique and a brilliant gift for improvisation. Like other composer-pianists, he wrote works to use as his personal calling cards, among them the two piano concertos recorded here. Following highly acclaimed recordings of the complete concertos by Mozart and Beethoven, this disc brings the team of Ronald Brautigam and the Cologne Academy to the very crossroads of Classicism and Romanticism.