New Piano Albums

Junyan Chen:2022-12-26

It's Time – Say, Gubaidulina, Chin, Alberga

As the Royal Academy of Music celebrates 200 years since its foundation in 1822, Junyan Chen is one of the recipients of its Bicentenary Scholarships scheme. "I have strong sympathy with living composers who explore their cultural identity. These four 'classical' composers brilliantly absorb other genres and art forms, reflecting their lives: the Turkish folk ballad, jazz, Russian poetry and African dance."
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Eric Lu:2022-12-22

Schubert – Piano Sonatas D.784 & 959

Eric Lu received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2021.This album is his first presentation of Franz Schubert on disc. " I felt I had to delve into one of his last sonatas at this point in my life, and I wanted to pair it with an under-appreciated work, the A minor, a work that was the real turning point in his life."
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Shai Wosner:2022-12-20

Variations on a Theme by FDR

Shai Wosner's latest project is a suite of five variations by five composers—Derek Bermel, Anthony Cheung, John Harbison, Vijay Iyer, and Wang Lu—who were given as their ‘theme’ a quote from a 1938 speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “Remember, remember always, that all of us… are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
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Arturo Nieto-Dorantes:2022-12-18

Ponce – Complete Piano Works, Vol. 1 & 2

Arturo Nieto-Dorantes has recorded and performed a lot of Mexican and Latin American music; solo piano, chamber music and concerto repertoire. He is the first pianist to perform the integral piano works by Mexican composer Manuel M. Ponce outside of Mexico which he is currently recording in four double albums – here are the first two.
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Alim Beisembayev:2022-12-16

Liszt – Transcendental Études

Alim Beisembayev took the gold medal at The Leeds International Piano Competition in 2021, and for his proper debut album (a shorter portrait was released in connection with the victory) he has chosen the most challenging repertoire possible. "Since early childhood, I have been inspired by performances of these works by legendary pianists such as Cziffra, Richter and Kissin, never dreaming that I would one day be performing them myself."
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Maurizio Pollini:2022-12-13

Beethoven – The Late Sonatas, Opp. 101 & 106

Maurizio Pollini has spent a lifetime with Beethoven. Back in the 1970s he made his now classic recording of the composer’s five late piano sonatas. Over the next four decades, he recorded all 32 sonatas, with the final volume released in 2014 – only to return in 2019, recording Beethoven's final three sonatas once more. This new album completes this second set of late sonatas.
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Fazil Say:2022-12-11

Bach – Goldberg Variations

When Fazil Say's first Bach album was released in 1988, many expressed a desire for him to perform and record the Goldberg Variations as well. Since then, he has given almost 3000 concerts and released 58 albums – even so, the Goldberg Variations have remained a significant omission. Until 2020, when the pandemic gave him the space to devote a considerable amount of time to analyzing and learning this masterpiece of music and mathematics.
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Nare Karoyan:2022-12-10

Gazarossian – 24 Etudes

Koharik Gazarossian (1907–1967), an Armenian born in Constantinople (now Istanbul) who went to Paris to study in her late teens, crossed cultures of East and West in her music as well. Her harmonically intriguing musical language clearly reflects Armenian folk music, but also contains echos of Chopin, Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. Khachaturian, the most prominent composer with Armenian roots, admired her Preludes and her Etudes especially and called them first-class works.
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Giovanni Doria Miglietta:2022-12-08

Earl Wild – Complete Piano Music

The "super virtuoso" Earl Wild's discography is endless and his activity lasted for almost a century. He was the only pianist to be invited at the White House to play for six consecutive presidents (the first one being Herbert Hoover in 1931), and in 1997, at the age of 82, he was the first pianist to stream a performance over the Internet. Giovanni Doria Miglietta has recorded Wild's complete compositions and arrangements for piano on a series of three albums which are now released together.
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Jacob Bogaart, Folke Nauta:2022-12-06

Cor de Groot – Hommage

There was a time when Cor de Groot was considered one of the world's greatest pianists. But he was also a composer, whose music receives many first recordings on the first half of this album. These are complemented by works written for de Groot when he lost the use of his right hand, as well as a few of the many arrangements he made for the left hand of works written for two hands, such as Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3.
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Eric Zuber:2022-12-03

The Young Chopin – Piano Concerto No. 1, Andante Spianato and Grande polonaise, Variations on La ci darem

During a period of just a few years, Eric Zuber was a recipient of major prizes from twelve prestigious international piano competitions including Rubinstein, Cleveland, Seoul, Sydney, Dublin, Honens, and the Piano-e-Competition. “I thought that it would be interesting to explore some of the repertoire that Chopin composed as a very young man, when he was flexing his pianistic muscles, so to speak, before he retreated to a life of mainly composition and teaching.”
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Sontraud Speidel:2022-12-01

Fanny Hensel – Piano Works 1821–46

Sontraud Speidel has recorded more than 50 commercial CDs, many of them with music by neglected composers such as Hummel, Kirchner, Reinecke, and Clara Schumann. She was the first pianist to record works for piano solo by Fanny Hensel, the sister of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The compositions by Hensel on this album, 11 of which are premiere recordings, span a time frame from 1821 to 1846.
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Mari Kodama:2022-11-29

New Paths

Hardly any relationship is as well-documented as that of Robert and Clara Schumann to Johannes Brahms. "The fascination that emanates from this connection of lives has touched me so much over the years that it has always been a concern of mine to musically tell the story of its beginning at some point", says Mari Kodama. The pieces she has chosen – Brahms' Piano Sonata op. 1, his Variations on a Theme by Schumann, the Variations Op. 18b, and Schumann's Widmung transcribed by Clara – all demonstrate the "strength and energy, tenderness and affection" that came from this friendship.
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Daniel-Ben Pienaar:2022-11-27

William Byrd – Pavans & Galliards, Variations & Grounds

Daniel-Ben Pienaar has a reputation for highly individual readings of the German piano classics and for playing an extensive repertoire of pre-Bach works on the piano. His large discography includes complete traversals of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Goldberg Variations and Six Partitas, as well as the Sonata cycles of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. The latest album explores the dances and variation works of William Byrd (1543–1623).
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Mari Kawamura:2022-11-25

Ma - Space Between

Ma is an ancient Japanese concept concerning space and time, a "charged stillness" that has served as an essential element in Japanese traditional arts. In a polarized world where differences are often the focal point, Mari Kawamura seeks to highlight similarities between seemingly contrasting compositions by Joseph Haydn, Lei Liang, Katharina Rosenberger, Toru Takemitsu, and Iannis Xenakis by uncovering their inherent Ma-like structures.
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Duo Kravos:2022-11-24

Mozart, Schubert, Bizet, Choveaux

Despite their young age, Zala Kravos and her younger brother Val have already been performing internationally for many years. In addition to their individual careers, they enjoy playing the repertoire for piano four hands and for two pianos together, which they do with an exceptionally close affinity and coordination. On their debut CD, they play Mozart's D major Sonata K. 381, Schubert's F minor Fantasy, and Bizet's Jeux d'enfants.
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Orion Weiss:2022-11-22

Arc II – Ravel, Brahms, Shostakovich

This is part of Weiss's recording project Arc I–III, a recital trilogy representing an inverted arc, like a rainbow’s reflection in water. Part one headed downhill, beginning from hope and proceeding down to despair. The current album takes us to the bottom of the journey, with music from the two World Wars, dealing with loss and grief – which doesn't necessarily mean that the music itself is depressing or despairing.
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Anne Queffélec:2022-11-20

Beethoven – The Last 3 Piano Sonatas

Anne Queffélec has more than forty album releases to her credit, including music by Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Scarlatti, Schubert, Liszt, Chopin, Bach, Debussy, Fauré, Mendelssohn, Satie, and the complete piano works of Ravel and Dutilleux. In 2019, Warner/Erato released a 21-CD ‘birthday box set’. Here is her brand new recording of what she calls "The three sisters", Beethoven's Sonatas Opp. 109–111.
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Finghin Collins:2022-11-18

The bright day is done

The concept of this CD – putting together music based around different times of the day – was suggested to Finghin Collins by Ciara Higgins, artistic director of the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival. The idea appealed to him immediately; it allows for a programme which is diverse in its range of composers, periods and moods, and in which the pieces can be enjoyed individually or as a complete journey.
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Kenji Miura:2022-11-15

Identity – Franck, Debussy, Ravel, Takemitsu

Kenji Miura, winner of the 2019 Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition, combines music of the French school with pieces by Toru Takemitsu. Born in Kobe, Japan, Miura studied in the UK and in Berlin, where he is now based. He says: “My torn-between-worlds feeling is shared by many around the world. This is my small musical letter to all those struggling with the many aspects of identity – a concept that should help us embrace who we are and our complicated, beautiful lives.”
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Qing Jiang:2022-11-13

Dreamed Landscapes

Composer Daniel Temkin’s Dreamed Landscapes, which receives its world premiere recording here, draws inspiration from nature, just as Janácek did with In the Mists and Ravel with Jeux d’eau. The other soundscapes on this album, with their mixture of new and old, all seem to recall times or places in memory, or evoke music of the past, with Ravel recalling Rameau and Couperin, and Adès conjuring the ghosts of Chopin and Szymanowski.
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Nenad Lecic:2022-11-11

Schumann & Prokofiev – Piano Works

Nenad Lecic's album deliberately combines two very contrasting composers and seemingly contradictory works, exemplifying the paradoxicality and complexity of a rapidly changing world. While Schumann's Fantasy, written during his painful separation from Clara, mirrors a passionate, despairing soul, Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata, composed in the midst of World War II, reflects the turbulence of the outside world.
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Diana Sahakyan:2022-11-10

Mel Bonis – Femmes de légende and other piano works

Born into a modest Parisian family who did not recognize her exceptional musical talent, Mel Bonis was eventually lucky enough to be introduced to César Franck who helped her get into the Paris Conservatoire, where she studied with the likes of Claude Debussy. While she was denied the possibility to complete her studies, she never gave up composing. Her works for piano on this recording are an impressive testimony to this.
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Paul Lewis:2022-11-07

Schubert – Piano Sonatas D. 537, 568 & 664

Paul Lewis has regularly devoted himself to in-depth explorations of a particular composer’s output, surveying aspects of the creativity of giants like Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn. On this album, he completes his exploration of Schubert’s sonatas, begun almost twenty years ago, with three masterpieces from the years 1816–1819, a time of feverish creativity and investigation for Schubert.
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