New Piano Albums

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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Josu de Solaun:2022-07-05

Haydn – Piano Sonatas

Spanish-American pianist Josu De Solaun is a prolific instrumentalist and composer who performs as a soloist, chamber musician, improviser and composer. He is also a published poet."In my childhood, everyone loved Mozart and Beethoven. Haydn was the ugly duckling. I always felt I was an ugly duckling and maybe that is also why I loved him so much from the beginning…"
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Lisa Moore:2022-07-01

Frederic Rzewski – no place to go but around

Lisa Moore performs piano works and works for piano and speaking pianist by Frederic Rzewski, with whom she has worked closely. "He could be outspoken, contrarian, outlandish, and opinionated, and yet humble and surprised, even puzzled, as to why the world found him difficult. Neither of us could win teaching jobs, and once, commiserating over lunch, he said, “It’s because we’re both terrorists, Lisa.”
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Matei Varga:2022-06-28

The Year That Never Was – Lecuona, Chopin, Gershwin and others

Ernesto Lecuona was a “salon virtuoso” who excelled in the short form and who carried throughout his life a strong musical link to his native country. He elevated Cuban music to a refined, almost “classical” status, and was often dubbed the “Chopin of the Tropics” and the “Cuban Gershwin”. Matei Varga intertwines pieces from Lecuona’s catalogue with other short works by composers such as Scarlatti, Chopin, Balakirev and Gershwin.
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Alexander Ullman:2022-06-25

Liszt – Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, Piano Sonata

Alexander Ullman was the winner of the 2011 Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest. This album is his first concerto recording. Both Liszt's concertos exemplify the composer's ability to cast a large-scale structure from subtle transformation of only a few themes. On this album, the Concertos are coupled with the great B minor Sonata, displaying equally masterful thematic transformation.
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Bertrand Chamayou:2022-06-22

Messiaen – Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus

Olivier Messiaen wrote this colossal work in a flash of brilliance over the course of just a few months in 1944. It is one of the prime examples of the immeasurable richness of his musical language. The recurring leitmotivs (the Theme of God; of the Star and the Cross; of Mystical Love... ) are enveloped in Messiaen’s trademark bird songs, exotic melodies, ancient Greek and Hindu rhythms, shimmering harmonies – everything working together to express the mystical truths of the divine.
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Diana Sahakyan:2022-06-19

Fanny Hensel – Das Jahr

"The year", composed by Fanny Hensel in 1841, unfolds as a colorful cycle of character pieces for the listener. The composer's blissful and eventful travels in Italy two years previously had inspired her, which is why many months appear brighter and more cheerfully composed than one would expect in her home of Germany. The cycle was not performed in its entirety until 1987. Since then, it has become her most famous work.
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Ivan Galic:2022-06-17

Scent of a Dream – Schubert, Brahms, Macek

“The works I recorded for my first CD…have always surprised the audience by their simplicity of expression, yet complexity of character and atmosphere.” Besides Schubert' Klavierstücke D. 946 and Brahms' Fantasien Op. 116,, Ivan Galic also pays tribute to his compatriot Ivo Macek, whom he considers one of the best Croatian composers for piano.
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Ralph van Raat:2022-06-14

Tan Dun – Piano Works

Tan Dun fuses traditional Chinese and Western classical and avant-garde musical languages in unprecedentedly natural ways. His piano music reflects the broad range and history of his composing, from his first official work Eight Memories in Watercolor (1978, rev. 2002) to the virtuosic showpiece Fire (2020), written for Ralph van Raat.
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Francesco Nicolosi:2022-06-12

Thalberg – Fantasies on Operas by Verdi Rossini and Bellini

Musical journalism has created a legend of rivalry between Sigismond Thalberg (1812–1871) and Liszt. Of course, there was an element of competition, but there seems to have been no open animosity, and certainly no defeat on Thalberg's part. He enjoyed a career of the greatest distinction, touring as far as the Americas, where Liszt never went. Liszt, meanwhile, included some of Thalberg’s operatic paraphrases and fantasies in his repertoire.
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Joanna Goodale:2022-06-09

Debussy in Resonance

On her new album Joanna Goodale enters into a dialogue with Claude Debussy. Inspired by the French composer's creative freedom, reverence for Nature, and fascination for Indonesian music, she has created tailor-made compositions for piano, gongs and singing bowls that dialogue with his, following a narrative thread along the water, the original source of life.
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Konstantin Lifschitz:2022-06-07

Bach, Seabourne – Toccatas and Fantasies

Konstantin Lifschitz's rich discography includes among other things Bach's Art of Fugue, Goldberg variations, and the complete Well-Tempered Clavier. Here, the seven Toccatas are interleaved with new works by Peter Seabourne, who says of the project: "After the inevitable nervousness of sharing a bed with such a genius, I increasingly warmed to the idea… it was the general concept both of 'toccata', and specifically how it shaped Bach’s miniature tone poems that appealed."
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Oda Voltersvik:2022-06-03

Neo – Scriabin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Gubaidulina

After the Romantic period, the trend towards neo-classical forms in both Europe and Russia came from a desire to bring clarity and stability. Within the frame of classical forms, these Russian masters do not only express their common heritage (i.e. works by Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov), but also show their human response to an uncertain and shifting political world.
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Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy:2022-06-01

Scarlatti – Sonatas

Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy is a prolific recording artist with a broad repertoire by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Chopin, Warenberg/Rachmaninoff, Kabalevsky, Tschaikowsky and Gershwin. You might have benefited from his advice without knowing it if you have used Henle's Chopin and Schumann editions, where he often writes the fingerings! This is his selection of Scarlatti Sonatas.
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Zee Zee:2022-05-29

Journey

Zee Zee (or Zuo Zhang) began her musical training in Germany at the age of five, and later continued her studies in China and the United States. She won the coveted Petschek Piano Award at the Juilliard, as well as first prizes at China's International Piano Concerto Competition and the Gina Bachauer Competition. Her first solo album features works associated with travel and pilgrimage by Liszt, Ravel, Poulenc, Schoenberg and Wagner.
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Marianna Shirinyan & Dominik Wizjan:2022-05-27

Rachmaninov – Suites for 2 Pianos

Marianna Shirinyan and Dominik Wizjan have played piano duo and 2-piano repertoire ever since the early days of Dominik’s master studies with Marianna at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. During the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the idea appeared to make a recording of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Suites for piano duo.
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Federico Colli:2022-05-24

Mozart

This is the first instalment of a new, intensely personal project by Federico Colli, who was inspired to study music by the discovery of Mozart’s music at the age of around six. Later, he won the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg which launched his career. The booklet includes a very heartfelt letter from Colli to Mozart, explaining the ideas that inspire his playing on this album.
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Josep Colom:2022-05-21

Moments Musicaux

This is a live recording of a recital combining works by Schubert with others by composers who either inspired him or inherited the legacy of his music. Josep Colom also revives a once common but now largely forgotten performing tradition: that of using improvisation to create transitions between composed works.
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Tanguy de Williencourt:2022-05-18

Franck - Triptychs & Works for Piano and Orchestra

Tanguy de Williencourt discovered César Franck as a ten-year-old, blown away by the composer's Piano Quintet and Violin Sonata. On this album, he plays the four masterpieces by Franck which give the piano the central place: two concertante pieces, Les Djinns and Symphonic Variations, and the two triptychs for solo piano.
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Anna Górecka:2022-05-17

Górecki - Piano Works

Already as a young boy, Henryk Górecki immersed himself in the pianistic element, and composed numerous mazurkas, preludes and other miniatures. He continued to write for the instrument during his whole career, although he became better known for his orchestral and choral works. The performer here is his daughter Anna Górecka.
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Luisa Imorde:2022-05-15

Polychromie - Messiaen & Couperin

Luisa Imorde's new album juxtaposes Messiaen's eight Preludes with the eight Preludes from Couperin's L'art de toucher le clavecin. Music by two composers, two and a half centuries apart, who at first seem to have very little to do with each other and yet are revealed to have musical similarities.
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Can Çakmur:2022-05-13

Without Borders - Bartók, Mitropoulos, Saygun, Enescu

In the early modern era, folk music opened up possibilities in connection with the dissolution of tonality. Previously, folk music had often been used within a nationalist agenda, or to satisfy the Romantic longing for a rustic life. Can Çakmur's new album explores some Eastern European composers' unsentimental and internationalist responses to folk music.
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Danae Dörken:2022-05-11

Odyssee

The Odyssey has fascinated Danae Dörken from a very young age. Even as a child, the ancient Greek epic poem was read to her as a bedtime story by her grandparents. She knows the various stages of the journey inside out, and considers it a very current story. "I think we're going through a modern odyssey. That's what I want to show with this album."
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Duo Lucas & Arthur Jussen:2022-05-09

Dutch Masters

With their new album. Lucas and Arthur Jussen want to present the rich treasure of Dutch music from the 20th and 21st centuries. They also pay tribute to their mentor and teacher Ton Hartsuiker, who recognized, inspired and encouraged them in their childhood days. One of the pieces is Theo Loevendie's Together, which was composed especially for the brothers and became an instant hit for the two.
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