New Piano Albums

Anna Fedorova:2022-09-20

Rachmaninoff – Piano Concertos 2 & 4

Anna Fedorova's live performance of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto is one of the most viewed classical concerto videos on YouTube (36 million views), and here's the long-awaited studio recording. Fedorova has now released three concertos (Nos. 1, 2 & 4) and plans to complete the cycle with Rach 3 in the spring of 2023.
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Igor Levit:2022-09-17

Tristan

The works on this album represent very different genres – all however explore nocturnal themes of love and death. The central work, Hans Werner Henze’s Tristan for piano, tape and orchestra is a concerto, a symphony and a piece of music theatre all wrapped into one. Levit also performs arrangements of excerpts from Wagner's Tristan and Mahler's 10th Symphony, all bookended by Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 and Harmonies du Soir.
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Jean-Baptiste Doulcet:2022-09-16

Un monde fantastique

This album focuses on the concept of fantasy literature that pervades Romantic repertoire, creating a world where puzzling poetry abounds, simultaneously characterized by legends, lightness, and metaphysical depth. Schumann's Kreisleriana, inspired by E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Liszt's Dante Sonata, are complemented by Liszt arrangements and Doulcet's own piece Endymion, inspired by John Keats' eponymous poem.
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Evgeny Kissin:2022-09-14

The Salzburg Recital

“I’m always better on live recordings”, Kissin says; “I’m simply more inspired in front of an audience.” Here is an example of him playing for a sell-out crowd in the Great Festival Hall in Salzburg, just as the organizer had returned to full capacity after corona restrictions. The audience was treated to a strikingly original program of works by Berg, Chopin, Gershwin, and a generous selection of encores.
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Fidan Aghayeva-Edler:2022-09-13

Fenster (Windows)

This program was created during the 2020 lockdown, reflecting on the strange times of the pandemic, when the world could only be observed through metaphorical windows that are transparent but at the same time not permeable. Fidan Aghayeva-Edler, specializing in the performance of contemporary music and improvisation, explores seven solo piano works by contemporary female composers.
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Paul Stewart:2022-09-11

Medtner – Piano Sonatas Vol. 3

There are 14 piano sonatas by Medtner, which span his career from early triumphs in Russia to disillusionment and exile in England in the 1930s. The three on this album were composed between 1911 and 1914, a time when Medtner’s fame was spreading. The so-called "Night Wind" sonata is considered one of his masterworks - Rachmaninov was bowled over by the work at its premiere, applauding “until the lights were extinguished”.
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Matthias Kirschnereit:2022-09-10

Haydn – Complete Piano Concertos

After exploring the transition from the Classical to the Romantic era – Hummel, Weber, Mendelssohn – Matthias Kirschnereit now turns to Haydn, playing and conducting all nine keyboard concertos that were definitely written by the composer. "Here and there I even take the liberty of intervening in the score and - as Joseph Haydn might have done, I trust - I use little ornaments, scales, embellishments and octave sequences to make the whole thing sound even more contemporary."
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François Mardirossian:2022-09-09

Hovhaness – Piano Works

Often considered a precursor of American minimalism, Alan Hovhaness occupies a unique space in 20th- century music. Considered old-fashioned by some, but greatly admired by a range of colleagues from Rachmaninov to Ravi Shankar. One of the greatest melodic writers of the 20th century and fiercely attached to tonality, he let himself be inspired by the philosophies and musical traditions of India, China, Japan, Greece, Armenia and many other countries.
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Iyad Sughayer:2022-09-08

Khachaturian – Works for Piano and Orchestra

The Piano Concerto established Khachaturian’s name as a composer in 1936. Apart from a demanding solo part, it also features an extensive solo for the musical saw. Thirty years later, he returned to the genre with a Concerto-Rhapsody. Sandwiched between the two works with orchestra, Iyad Sughayer, who made his recording début with a disc of Khachaturian's solo piano works, presents a piano version of one of the composer's best-loved pieces, the Masquerade Suite.
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Aurèle Marthan:2022-09-07

Guéthary

The Basque Country is a region that many artists have cherished: Ravel was born in Ciboure, Stravinsky arranged his Pétrouchka in Biarritz, Isaac Albéniz opted to spend his last days in Cambo-les-Bains, and so on. With Ravel's Piano Concerto in an arrangement for chamber ensemble as the centerpiece, this album covers more than three centuries of music, including music by Rameau and Couperin – the composer of La Basque.
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Orli Shaham:2022-09-05

Mozart – Complete Piano Sonatas, Vols. 2 & 3

Orli Shaham is deep into a multi-year endeavor of recording all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. In Volumes 2 and 3 of the cycle, Orli Shaham performs the ever-popular Sonata K.331, including the Rondo Alla Turca; the Sonata in D major, K.576, one of the most technically demanding piano works by Mozart; and the Sonata in A minor, K.310, a work with enormous emotional depth.
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Benyamin Nuss:2022-09-02

Unite!

Frederic Rzewski, who died last year at 83, was one of the essential contemporary US composers. His best-known work is perhaps The People United Will Never Be Defeated, 36 variations on a Chilean resistance song. Also included on Benjamin Nuss' album are the four North American Ballads and another variation work: Mayn Yingele, based on a traditional Jewish tune and composed on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the infamous "Crystal Night" of 1938.
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Mariam Batsashvili:2022-08-30

Romantic Piano Masters

Mariam Batsashvili’s second album for Warner Classics album is primarily devoted to virtuoso piano transcriptions. Liszt takes pride of place with several transcriptions and realizations of operatic works such as the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Thalberg's spectacular take on Bellini’s opera La sonnambula is also included, as well as Harold Bauer’s adaptation of César Franck’s Prélude, fugue et variation for organ.
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Elizabeth Newkirk:2022-08-25

The Americanist

A comprehensive project, The Americanist features an album of interwar orchestral works by Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin, and William Grant Still arranged for solo piano, accompanied by an essay that explores ideas and narratives that have shaped American culture. What began with a program of interwar music has led Elisabeth Newkirk all the way back to the Enlightenment, through the writings of 19th century philosophers, the transcendentalist and New Negro movements.
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Michael Korstick:2022-08-19

Beethoven – Piano Concertos 0–7

The title of this album will come across as strange for piano lovers accustomed to the "canon of the five piano concerti of Beethoven". Number 0 in this case is an early work without opus number and no surviving orchestration. No 6 is a single movement sketch of another concerto, and No 7 is Beethoven's arrangement of his own Violin Concerto for piano and orchestra. Michael Korstick is a highly productive pianist with more than 60 previous CD recordings and a repertoire of more than 130 piano concerti.
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Francesco Piemontesi:2022-08-17

Schoenberg, Messiaen, Ravel – works for piano & orchestra

Though stylistically very different, all three works on this album have American connections: Ravel’s Concerto in G was his most successful attempt to integrate elements of American jazz into his own musical language; Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto was composed in Los Angeles, where Schoenberg was exiled after fleeing Europe; and Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques took as its inspiration a series of records of American birdsong.
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Annabel Guaita:2022-08-15

Identities – Grieg, Hvoslef, Saeverud

The main work on this album is Ketil Hvoslef's Rondo con Variazioni (1970), is considered one of the most important contributions to Norwegian piano literature from the 20th century. The work is framed by piano pieces by Edvard Grieg and Harald Sæverud (Hvoslef's father), composers that the Norwegian-Spanish pianist Annabel Guaita grew up with. "When I turned 50, it was natural to look back. Who am I? What has shaped me as a musician? What is my identity as a practitioner?"
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Emma Abbate & Julian Perkins:2022-08-12

Tournament for Twenty Fingers

This duo's previous projects have included Carl Maria von Weber’s complete piano duets and Mozart’s complete sonatas for keyboard duet on a variety of important original instruments. For this album they have devised an eclectic programme of music from 20th century Britain, with Stephen Dodgson's Tournament for Twenty Fingers as centerpiece, a sequence of vignettes inspired by Dvorák.
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Schaghajegh Nosrati:2022-08-08

Bach – The Well-Tempered Clavier I

András Schiff has praised the “astonishing clarity, purity, and maturity” of Schaghajegh Nosrati's musical approach, particularly reflected in her renditions of Bach. This is her fifth album, and the fourth devoted to the German Master of Preludes and Fugues. As chance would have it, this CD’s release coincides with the 300th anniversary of the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
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Alexander Gadjiev:2022-08-03

Prokofiev & Tcherepnin

At the 2021 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Alexander Gadjiev not only won Second Prize, but also the prestigious “Krystian Zimerman Prize for the best performance of a Chopin Sonata”. This album features brief pieces from collections by Prokofiev and father and son Tcherepnin. "For me it’s like a journey without a chronology: I just wanted to choose an interesting itinerary."
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Patricia Pagny:2022-07-28

Impressions Nocturnes

Tender or troubled, dark or starlit, the night has long been a source of artistic creativity. Twentieth-century France was certainly one of the countries that developed this theme most, which is shown on this CD with night pieces by famous composers like Debussy and Fauré, but also with lesser known works by Georges Migot, Jean-Jacques Werner and Georges Auric.
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Julia Kociuban:2022-07-23

Polish Polonaises

On this album, Julia Kociuban goes beyond Chopin and explores the musical genre that totally took over Polish salon life at the beginning of the 19th century. At the threshold of Romanticism, this musical showcase of Polishness coincided with the rapidly growing dominance of the piano, as a result of which, until 1815, Polonaises constituted as much as 96 percent of dance pieces for piano published in Warsaw!
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François Mardirossian:2022-07-18

Glass – Complete Etudes

François Mardirossian has been fascinated by Glass's Etudes ever since he heard the composer perform them at a concert in Lyon: "Despite a noisy and torrential downpour falling on the main stage of the Roman amphitheatre, he performed his recently completed Études for piano thereby offering every one of us in the audience what remains for me one of my greatest musical experiences."
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Peter Donohoe:2022-07-11

Grieg – Lyric Pieces

Peter Donohoe has been beguiled by Grieg since a very young age, for reasons that remain somewhat intangible. "Although one is able to identify the originality of Grieg as a composer – the Norwegian folk element in his music, his natural gift for memorable melodic lines, his occasional diversions into unique and extraordinarily forward-looking harmonies, and, to some degree, his emotional naïveté – there is a unique, unidentifiable kernel in his output that defies analysis, as is true of the work of all the great composers."
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