New Piano Albums

Claire Huangci:2024-10-09

Made in USA

American music is a melting pot of musical styles and influences. However, Claire Huangci sees a prevalent trait connecting them all – a daring spirit and freshness, a defiance of traditions, and rejuvenation in musical form and sound. It is represented here by Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Amy Beach's Variations on Balkan Themes, Barber's Piano Sonata, and Earl Wild's Etudes after Gershwin.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Fazil Say:2024-10-07

Oiseax tristes

Oiseaux tristes takes its name from the second piece of Ravel’s Miroirs, in Fazil Say's opinion "one of the most comprehensive and interesting works in the piano repertoire." The two other works on the album are Debussy's Suite Bergamasque and Couperin's Ordre No. 21, to which Say was introduced by a harpsichordist friend in Istanbul.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Elisabeth Leonskaja:2024-10-05

Berg, Schoenberg, Webern

Of the triumvirate of composers known as the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg wrote the most frequently for the piano. Alban Berg and Anton Webern were his most gifted pupils. Webern’s obsessive devotion to Schoenberg led him to adopt the twelve-note system even more rigorously than his mentor. Berg was more connected to the 19th century and always sounds the most Romantic of the three.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Arseniy Gusev:2024-10-02

Musical Offering

Arseniy Gusev finished his master's program at the Yale School of Music as a composer in 2024, and now continues his studies at the Juilliard School as a pianist. His debut on the Steinway & Sons label offers a uniquely wide-ranging program of music by Bach, Dowland, Retinsky (born 1986), and Antonello da Caserta (active in the late 14th and early 15th centuries).
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Alessio Bax:2024-09-30

Forgotten Dances

On his ninth solo album on Signum Records, Alessio Bax explores works associated with dancing, from Bach to Bartók, including tangos and waltzes spanning three centuries. A great variety of styles are showcased in this program, which also features Bax's own arrangement of Ravel's La Valse.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Joanne Polk:2024-09-28

Nostalgia – Piano Music of Cécile Chaminade, Vol. 2

Joanne Polk has spent decades performing and recording music by underrated female composers, such as Amy Beach, Louise Farrenc and Fanny Mendelssohn. In 2014, her CD titled The Flatterer, solo piano music of French Romantic composer Cécile Chaminade, was released on the Steinway & Sons Label. Here comes the long-awaited second volume.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Mao Fujita:2024-09-25

72 Preludes

Mao Fujita traces the forward line of Preludes that started with Bach, through Chopin, to more recent times and distant territories. Nearly half a century after Chopin, Russian visionary Alexander Scriabin began work on his own set of Preludes. It was important for Fujita to complete his own “cycle” of cycles with a work from Japan, and in the 24 Preludes by Akio Yashiro, he found a perfect third chapter to his album.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Cathy Krier:2024-09-22

Piano Poems

Throughout the ages, music and literature have always been closely linked. Composers have been inspired by poetry and stories. The program of Cathy Krier's new album explores composers’ relationship with language and how they deal with it, from Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit to Cinderella, continuing into our own time with two world premiere recordings.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Théo Fouchenneret:2024-09-19

Fauré – Nocturnes

The music of Fauré was the source of Théo Fouchenneret's first musical emotions. He started practicing the Nocturnes at a very early age – the Third was on the program of his very first concert in Paris. Later, he won First Prize in the Gabriel Fauré International Competition in Pamiers, his hometown. "Celebrating the anniversary of his death this year is another opportunity I wouldn’t have missed for the world!"
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Théo Fouchenneret:2024-09-16

søleils blancs

"After living in Finland for a year, then travelling regularly to Sweden to work in the peace and quiet there, the path of chance – if such a thing exists – led me to Denmark, where I married a Danish musician and learned the language... This album pays tribute to the emotion I have felt in discovering a territory that has given me so much, countries so different from one another, and yet all marked by this vibrant glow."
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Grigory Sokolov:2024-09-12

Purcell & Mozart

Sokolov dedicated his entire 2022/23 season to the music of Purcell and Mozart, revealing their shared streaks of charm and melancholy. The album consists of two different live recordings – the first half is from Sokolov’s Purcell recital at the Santander International Festival in August 2023, while the Mozart half was recorded two days earlier in San Sebastián at the Quincena Music festival.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Rikke Sandbjerg & Kristoffer Hyldig:2024-09-09

Espansiva – Works for 4 Hand Piano

These are all first recordings of Carl Nielsen’s piano duet arrangements of his orchestral works, the recent discoveries of which are a tale of luck and diligent librarianship—told by Rikke Sandberg in the booklet notes. Included are four-hand versions of the "Sinfonia Espansiva," two works from Nielsen’s Opera Saul & David, and the original sketch for the Højby Rifle Club March, composed by Nielsens’ father.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Alexandra Ivanova:2024-09-07

Haydn – For 2 Hands and 4

Alexandra Ivanova performs Haydn on fortepianos from the composer's era, interspersing his works with short preludes (or "Impulses") of her own. In addition to two Sonatas and the great F Minor Variations, she also plays the rarely heard four-hand piece Il Maestro e lo Scolare, performing both the primo and secondo parts.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Aline Piboule:2024-09-05

Fauré – Nocturnes and Barcarolles

Aline Piboule’s Fauré/Dutilleux disc (2017) was listed in Classica’s ‘Discographie idéale du piano’. Now she returns to Fauré, playing on a unique piano by Gaveau, built in 1929 and acquired in 1952 by the concert society Les Amis de la Musique de Pau, founded by Gonzalo Tintorer, a pianist and teacher who was a friend of Pablo Picasso, Francis Poulenc and Edgar Varèse.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Duo Tal & Groethuysen:2024-09-04

Bach – Transcriptions for 2 Pianos

With this album, Yaara Tal and Andreas Groethuysen follow up on their productions of the Goldberg Variations, Art of Fugue, and most recently Yaara's Tracing Bach. Arrangers are mostly from the late 19th century and the originals represent a wide range of Bach's output – organ works, other instrumental works, chorale preludes, arias, and the complete 6th Brandenburg Concerto.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Máire Carroll:2024-09-02

Philip Glass – Complete Piano Etudes

Philip Glass composed his 20 piano etudes between 1991 and 2012. A decade later, they are the most performed and recorded of his works. In Book 1, Glass explored a variety of piano techniques, partly in order to improve his own playing, while Book 2 follows more adventurous paths in terms of musical ideas, harmony and structure.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Jonathan Fournel:2024-08-30

Chopin & Szymanowski

Jonathan Fournel came to international attention when he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth International Grand Prix-Queen Mathilde Prize in 2021 (having already won several international competitions a few years earlier). Here is his interpretation of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, bookended by two early variation works by Karol Szymanowski.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Somi Kim:2024-08-28

Pictures at an Exhibition

Somi Kim's debut solo album features two Suites inspired by visual art - the monumental Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, preceded by Aotearoa Pictures, an 11-part work from New Zealand composer Janet Jennings, responding to artworks by four New Zealanders – Areez Katki, Alberto Garcia Alvarez Hiria Anderson-Mita, and Star Gossage.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Alexandra Dariescu:2024-08-26

Clara Schumann & Edvard Grieg – Piano Concertos

For three consecutive seasons, Alexandra Dariescu has strived for and achieved gender equality in her concerto programming, shining a light on the often-overlooked brilliance of women composers. “I got to know Clara Schumann’s Concerto and fell in love with this youthful piece, full of dreams, fiendish virtuosity and a testament to what an innovative performer and composer Clara was, even as a teenager".
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Isata Kanneh-Mason:2024-08-23

Mendelssohn

Isata Kanneh-Mason recently featured in The Other Mendelssohn, a film exploring the life of Fanny Mendelssohn and uncovering the fact that the Easter Sonata, a piece lost for 150 years, was in fact written by Fanny, not Felix. This album includes the world premiere recording of the new urtext edition of the Sonata, along with Felix's First Piano Concerto and transcriptions by other composers of Mendelssohn’s most famous music.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Maria Narodytska:2024-08-21

War Poems

Unfortunately, history is full of wars and consequently, there are many musical works of genius that can be listened to as commentaries on the horrors of war. Maria Narodytska presents a number of such works from the 19th and 20th centuries, alongside new music, composed in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Alfredo Perl:2024-08-20

Beethoven – Complete Piano Works, Vol. 1

In 1997, Alfredo Perl performed all Beethoven piano sonatas in London, Santiago de Chile, and Moscow. At the same time, his first recording of the 32 sonatas was released. Now he has re-recorded them for this complete Beethoven project. Vol. 1 features works composed in 1791-1800, mainly in two genres central to Beethoven’s entire career, namely the variation and the sonata.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Silver Garburg Piano Duo:2024-08-18

Schubert – Piano Duets

Silver and Garburg were well on the way to promising solo careers when they paired up first privately and then at the piano. 20 years later, they are firmly established at the top of the international piano duo scene. This album showcases some of Schubert's finest works from his final years – the F minor Fantasy, the C major Grand Duo, "Lebensstürme", and others.
Audio & Booklet in NML >>

Junhee Kim:2024-08-16

Apparitions – Junhee Kim Plays Liszt

The obligatory hiatus during the pandemic led Junhee Kim to explore some of Liszt’s lesser-known piano pieces, ending up with a "personal playlist" with works from all periods of the composer's life. “I wanted to approach Liszt’s essential self – a personality that differs from all the images we have of him as a human being.”
Audio & Booklet in NML >>