Classical Piano Music!

Zlata Chochieva is a unique pianist of the highest calibre. From Salzburg, where she lives and teaches at the Mozarteum, she enchants music-lovers all over the world with her exceptional artistry, combining natural musical expression with outstanding and self-evident technical ability. Read more...

Poised with a contemporary air and pure timeless beauty, the creations of piano bench designer and maker Mario Koch were conspicuously present at the Frankfurt Musikmesse 2018. Under the trademark MAKONI visitors were given a chance to indulge in a different world of the piano’s best friend and companion; the piano bench. Read more...

From transcriptions by Liszt and Busoni to new commissions from her own contemporaries, the brilliant young French pianist Lise de la Salle tells IP how J S Bach has inspired her programming across three centuries of piano repertoire; the revolutionary role of the piano in the French protests of 1968; and do technical terms deter listeners? Read more...

Federico Colli just released his first album of sixteen Scarlatti Piano Sonatas on Chandos Records. Colli has emerged as one of the most interesting pianists of his generation after victories in the Salzburg Mozart Competition and the 2012 edition of the Leeds International Piano Competition. Read more...

This April, Piano Street will be exhibiting at Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany. The exhibition will take place at the Messe Frankfurt Convention Centre and is the world’s biggest trade show for musical instruments, sheet music, music production and marketing. Piano Street will be showing the digital services available for individuals and for institutions. Read more...

Warner Classics has recently contributed to both a distant and a close look on Claude Debussy. Their 33-disc set aims to include everything Debussy wrote, from his earliest compositions of 1879-80 to the late sonatas composed during the first world war. As a part of the project Warner Classics has produced a three-part documentary series named ”In the Footsteps of Debussy”. Read more...

The great French composer Achille-Claude Debussy died 100 years ago, on March 25 in Paris. Debussy is considered one of the fathers of modern music and the most influential of all French composers. From Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, Clair de lune has emerged as the most beloved and appreciated piece of the suite appreciated by pianists on all levels. From the beautiful interiors of Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, Rome we hear Italian pianist Alessandra Ammara play the piece. Read more...

Pianistic polymath Pierre-Laurent Aimard brings a spirit of adventure to Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux; Paul Roberts explores Debussy’s fascination with visual imagery in the composer’s centenary year; IP celebrates the 80th birthday of virtuoso and activist Frederic Rzewski; and rare treats at Husum’s annual piano festival in northern Germany. Read more...

2018-06-16"I didn't really like jazz until I was 14. I listened to classical music, and rhythm and blues before that. When I got a lot of criticism from critics about doing The HeadHunters record (1973) — like I was selling out. Nope. I was expressing where I came from." Read more at cbc.ca

2018-06-14Jean-Yves Thibaudet is accomplished as a classical pianist, but he branches afield too. Unlike a great many of his contemporaries, he plays and records movie soundtracks. He considers them the equal of other compositions and enjoys the fun of recording them. Read more at wrti.org

2018-06-15"The fingering will somehow reveal the phrasing, will be in partnership with the phrasing—so not for security or for ease only, although ease is important to some extent. The main thing is to indicate the phrasing with the fingerings, and that’s what I try to do." Read more at playbill.com

2018-06-13Lauren Zhang is 16, but she already expresses a depth of interpretive emotion far beyond her years. By focusing on the comparison between Prokofiev's violent and sometimes bizarre sections of the second piano concerto and then contrasting them with the lyrical sections, Zhang wowed the judges at the BBC Young Musician competition. Read more at bbc.com

2018-06-12Leif Ove Andsnes studies Mozart at a much deeper level than others. He tries to dig into what he calls Mozart's three "moods" and discovers things he never considered. Read more at steinway.com

2018-06-11Many musicians find the drudgery inherent in any practice session to be intimidating and displeasing. Emmanuel Ax, however, has a few ideas about how to make it less so. For example, he says to practice different things, such as something for an imminent performance and something else from a performance that is months away. Read more at lifehacker.com

2018-06-10When the piano hit the scene in 1700, the harpsichord was still king. Cristofori had developed an instrument that would change the musical world, but no one was interested. Now, 300 years later, the piano is ubiquitous, and the harpsichord is left to "original-instruments" ensembles. Most likely, it is the piano's unequaled versatility that has led to its place in today's musical world. Read more at bbc.co.uk

2018-06-09Imagine that you bought a piano for six pounds. Further, imagine that your business let you spend the odd slew of pounds here and there to build your collection of pianos. Now, imagine that you get to sell them for a million pounds. Read more at express.co.uk