New Piano Albums

Isata Kanneh-Mason:2023-06-30

Childhood Tales

Isata Kanneh-Mason evokes the magic of childhood on her third solo album, centred around Ernö Dohnányi’s now rarely performed Variations on a Nursery Song, expanding the well-known ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ into a truly virtuosic work. Subtitled “for the enjoyment of friends of humour, to the annoyance of others”, it was performed almost every year at the Proms from 1920s to 1950s.
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Izabella Simon & Dénes Várjon:2023-06-28

Mahler – Symphony No. 1, piano 4 hands

This transcription of Mahler's First Symphony was made by one of the best interpreters of Mahler’s music: the conductor Bruno Walter. "This immediate encounter with the work and with the genius of Mahler was a path of great discovery and an incredible adventure for us", say Izabella Simon & Dénes Várjon, husband and wife who form a piano duo with a special interest in rarely played works.
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Anna Zassimova:2023-06-26

Chopin – Ballades 2 & 4, Scherzo 4, Mazurkas & Waltzes

Anna Zassimova has an unusually broad artistic education, with degrees in musicology and art history. She has recieved a lot of praise for her interpretations of music by overlooked Romantic and modernist Russian composers such as Medtner, Catoire, Roslavets and Wyschnegradsky, and considers Chopin her great 'non-Russian' love.
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Aaron Pilsan:2023-06-24

Schumann – Kreisleriana, Geistervariationen, Widmann – Elf Humoresken

Jörg Widmann was obviously inspired by Schumann’s music when he composed his Eleven Humoresques. These pieces evoke Schumann already through their titles, but according to Aaron Pilsan, "even Widmann's musical language is very similar, even though their styles are obviously very different. The starting point...is from feelings, from the emotions and sentiments."
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Elizabeth Sombart:2023-06-23

Mozart – Piano Concertos 20, 21, 23, 27

Elisabeth Sombart has a strong relationship with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the conductor Pierre Vallet; they have previously made acclaimed recordings of Beethoven's complete Piano Concertos together. The four concertos on this new album belong to Mozart's greatest and span his last six years, 1785–1791.
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Josu de Solaun:2023-06-20

Nocturnes on the Margins

This live recording of a concert given by Josu de Solaun in 2019 offers a different interpretation of one of the most popular solo piano genres: the nocturne. Avoiding the canonical works by Chopin, he explores the less familiar margins of the repertoire: “This album of crepuscular thoughts and melting music is an invitation to the dream world: a journey to the far reaches of the night”.
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Olli Mustonen:2023-06-19

Rautavaara, Martinu – Piano Concertos Nos. 3

Premièred in 1999 by Vladimir Ashkenazy, to whom it is dedicated, Rautavaara's Piano Concerto No 3, subtitled Gift of Dreams, has managed to join the small group of concertos from the end of the 20th century that are now regarded as part of the established repertoire. Olli Mustonen pairs it with Martinu's Third Concerto, composed 50 years earlier.
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Zlata Chochieva:2023-06-15

Im Freien

Sensitive to nature and to the emotions it inspires, Zlata Chochieva has conceived this very personal album with a wide diversity of climates, from Schumann’s Waldszenen and Ravel's Miroirs to Bartók’s mysterious nocturnal music and Schultz-Evler's virtouso Arabesque on themes from The Beautiful Blue Danube.
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Emili Brugalla:2023-06-14

Granados – Goyescas

One of the most important works for piano in the Spanish repertoire, Goyescas was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya (1746–1828). The suite, subtitled Los majos enamorados, ‘Young people in love’, conjures up Spanish life in Goya’s time – gallant and sensual, melancholic and dark.
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Aris Alexander Blettenberg:2023-06-12

Hommage à Beethoven

Aris Alexander Blettenberg won first prize in the Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna in 2021, and continues to pay tribute to the composer. Here, the Sonata op. 101 is surrounded by Liszt's transcription of the Allegretto from the 7th Symphony, Schumann's unfinished Beethoven Variations, and Blettenberg's own transcription of the song An die Hoffnung.
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Simon Bürki:2023-06-11

Reminiscence

For his debut album Simon Bürki has chosen sixteen miniatures, most of them by Rachmaninov, including four contrasting Études-tableaux which range all the way from a lyrical melody to thrilling climaxes. The album also includes works by Liszt, Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin, largely bonded over themes of night and melancholy.
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Shorena Tsintsabadze:2023-06-10

Dedication – Schumann, Brahms, Liszt

Liszt published his Sonata in B minor in 1854 with a dedication to Robert Schumann in response to the latter’s dedication of his Fantasie in C to Liszt. Liszt loved the Fantasie very much but although he had played it to Schumann in private, he never performed it in public. Shorena Tsintsabadze combines the two monumental works on her new album.
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Giorga Tommasi & Carlo Maria Griguoli:2023-06-08

Rachmaninoff – Suites & Song transcriptions for 2 Pianos

Giorga Tommasi and Carlo Maria Griguoli are two thirds of the PianoS Trio, known for performing masterpieces of symphonic literature transcribed for three pianos by Griguoli. This recording includes Rachmaninov's two Suites for 2 Pianos, as well as Griguoli's transcriptions of songs by Rachmaninov.
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Luisa Imorde:2023-06-06

C. Schumann & C. M. von Weber – Piano Concertos

Luisa Imorde's previous albums have been dedicated to Beethoven/Wölfl, Bach/Kapustin, and Couperin/Messiaen, illustrating her predilection for interesting juxtapositions. The new CD features Clara Schumann's and Carl Maria von Weber's Piano Concertos, complemented by solo piano pieces.
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Geoffrey Duce:2023-06-05

Fantasies & Rhapsodies – C.P.E. Bach, McCabe, Schubert, Dohnányi

Since the Renaissance, keyboard composers have used the titles Fantasia and Rhapsody to designate a work that has a relatively free form, where they could allow their imaginations to take flight without the necessity of being restricted to previously existing models. Geoffrey Duce has chosen a program of both these forms for this recording with works spanning the Baroque to the 20th Century.
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Peter Jablonski & Elisabeth Brauss:2023-06-03

Bacewicz – Piano Concerto, Concerto for 2 Pianos

Grazyna Bacewicz was a major Polish composer known for her inventive, complex, and original musical language. Her Piano Concerto is an early work composed in 1949 for a composition competition celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chopin’s death. When she wrote her Concerto for Two Pianos two decades later, she was a well-established composer whose status alone almost guaranteed success.
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Rodolphe Menguy:2023-06-02

Rhapsodies hongroises – Liszt, Bartók, Kodály

On this album, Rodolphe Menguy raises the issue of how Hungarian composers have dealt with traditional music and traces the influence of Liszt on the two pillars of Hungary’s cultural revival in music: Bartók and Kodály. Menguy was awarded the ‘Young Soloist Prize’ by the Public French-speaking Media in 2021, and has previously been named Classical Newcomer of the Year.
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Wouter Valvekens:2023-05-31

Masques – Szymanowski, Schumann and others

This album peruses the mystery of masks. "Sometimes masks are used as disguises or distractions for devious intentions, other times for entertainment and society events. The stage is set at a masquerade ball, where a range of characters present themselves, without us ever really being able to truly see who they are, what’s on their minds, what they are up to."
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Barbara Karaskiewicz & Michal Rot:2023-05-30

Rachmaninov – Suites for Two Pianos

In Rachmaninov's Suite No. 1 for 2 pianos, each movement is inspired by a poem, where romantic scenery provides a background for human passions. The second suite was composed together with the second Piano Concerto, when the composer was returning to full creative strength after a breakdown caused by the failure of his 1st Symphony.
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Garrick Ohlsson:2023-05-28

Beethoven – Complete Piano Concertos

Garrick Ohlsson learned his first Beethoven concerto sixty years ago, and in a lifetime of performing these essential concertos, he has played each more than one hundred times. "I was thrilled when Donald Runnicles, one of my favorite collaborators, invited me to record them with the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, an ensemble of star players."
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Jonathan Phillips:2023-05-26

J. S. Bach – Tranquillity

Bach's music is the bedrock Jonathan Phillips has returned to over his lifetime, but until recently it remained a private affair. "I was encouraged to share this repertoire by a friend, after playing most of it at an intimate recital in April 2019. Deeply humbled by the response, I decided it was worthwhile recording and offering my interpretation of it to the wider music-loving world."
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Zhenni Li:2023-05-23

A Letter – Sergei Bortkiewicz Piano Works

Zhenni Li-Cohen's new album, her second for the Steinway label, is dedicated to the Ukrainian composer Sergei Bortkiewicz. Her reaction after hearing this music for the first time was profound: "I found yearning, nostalgia, and the ineffable, expressing the whole spectrum of emotion that makes us human; I found tears, joy, sweeping love, passion, and humor.”
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Marie Rosa Günter:2023-05-21

Kosmos und Fragment – Beethoven, Webern, Kallmeyer

After her solo debut featuring Bach's Goldberg Variations, Marie Rosa Günter once again brings out a program with highly demanding and profound music – combining Ludwig van Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata and his Bagatelles Op. 126 with Anton Webern's aphoristic Variations Op. 27, as well as the world premiere recording of Ulrich Kallmeyer's Variations on the hymn "Jerusalem".
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Jean-Marc Luisada:2023-05-19

Au cinéma ce soir

Jean-Marc Luisada plays piano works ranging from Mozart to Nino Rota, used in some of his favorite movies from the 60s and 70s. But the most personal and profound tribute in this album is to his parents. "They taught me to love films and music. At the cinema, we saw great Hollywood movies together, masterpieces of French cinema, of Italian neorealism, and so much else."
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