New Piano Albums

Mark Viner:2022-10-19

Chaminade – Piano Music, Vol. 2

After he won the 2012 Alkan-Zimmerman International Piano Competition in Athens, Mark Viner’s recordings of rarely heard repertoire has confirmed his reputation as one of today’s indisputable torchbearers of the Romantic Revival. This is his second recital with music by Cécile Chaminade, a composer whose popularity at the beginning of the 20th century was such that only in the USA there were around 200 "Chaminade Clubs".
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Víkingur Ólafsson:2022-10-16

From Afar

Vikingur Ólafsson’s new album was inspired by a meeting with the 96-year-old composer György Kurtág. Originally scheduled as a 10–15-minute meeting after a concert in Budapest, the session ended up lasting over two hours. The program heard here is a tribute to Kurtág, but also a reflection of Ólafsson's own musical life story. Another unique aspect is that the recital was recorded twice: once on a Steinway concert grand and again on a felted upright.
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Mao Fujita:2022-10-14

Mozart – Complete Piano Sonatas

As a kindergartener, Mao Fujita recalls being transfixed by Horowitz playing Mozart in a recording from the Great Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Roughly 15 years later, Fujita played the same sonata in the same hall, winning the silver medal of the Tchaikovsky Competition in one of those rare moments of coming full-circle. Fujita has also performed the complete sonatas live to great acclaim as part of the Verbier Festival.
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Krystian Zimerman:2022-10-11

Szymanowski – Piano Works

Krystian Zimerman’s most direct link with Szymanowski is through his early friendship with Arthur Rubinstein, the great pianist who knew the composer well and championed his works. For this album Zimerman has selected repertoire that shows the essence of Szymanowski, aiming to shed new light on his music and place him firmly in the canon of great composers of piano music. Each work or group of pieces represents a distinctive stage in Szymanowski's development.
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Giorgio Trione Bartoli:2022-10-09

MacDowell – Sonatas 1 & 2, Woodland Sketches

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) was an interesting and original American pianist-composer trained for a long time in Europe; he met both Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt, and was introduced by the latter – who appreciated his Modern Suite Op.10 – to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. The sources of his inspiration are found in German romanticism, both poetic and musical, combined with a predilection for Nordic sagas.
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Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt:2022-10-07

Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev – Ballets

Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt has selected music that was originally written to be choreographed and performed with orchestra. Stravinsky, Ravel and Prokofiev all made piano versions of ballet works, not in the spirit of mere reductions, but conceiving them as genuine – often fiercely virtuosic – concert pieces for piano. Fonlupt says: "when you listen to Tchaikovsky, you want to see the dancers . . . In these works, you can very well do without them."
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Esther Birringer:2022-10-06

Debussy – Piano Works

Esther Birringer has always been fascinated by Debussy's magical sounds and his extraordinary power to evoke dreamy atmospheres that allow you to escape time and space. Wanting to create a fully rounded portrait of him, her selection on this album ranges from early piano compositions up to some of the later oeuvres, and contrasts seldom played works such as the Ballade, the Nocturne, and the brilliant Masques with the two well-known sets of Images.
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Stefanovich & Aimard:2022-10-05

Visions

Pierre-Laurent Aimard has played Messiaen's monumental Visions de l'Amen from the age of fifteen, turned the pages when Yvonne Loriod and Messiaen performed it, worked on it with Messiaen, and played it countless times since. "If having a home really means anything, then this piece is my home." Tamara Stefanovich has made several acclaimed duo recordings with Aimard, but also award-winning solo albums such as “Influences” (2019), with works by Ives, Bartók, Messiaen and Bach.
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Alessandro Deljavan:2022-10-03

Haydn – Variations & Sonatas

Alessandro Deljavan is a prolific recording artist with a discography of over 60 albums. Recent releases include the complete Chopin Waltzes, Études and Mazurkas, Bach Complete Little Preludes and Toccatas, Grieg Complete Lyric Pieces, piano works by Schumann, Hahn, Mompou, and several recordings of chamber music. Over the next few years, his affinity for the Classics will be highlighted by the Artalinna label, beginning with this Haydn album.
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Kun-Woo Paik:2022-10-01

Granados – Goyescas

Kun-woo Paik is known for focusing on one composer at a time. In recent years the 76-year-old pianist has recorded Chopin's complete Nocturnes (2019) and explored Schumann on an album also released by Deutsche Grammophon (2020). Now he has turned to Spanish music, and more specifically Granados. Goyescas, Op. 11, the composer's masterpiece for piano, was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya.
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Vincent Larderet:2022-09-29

The Scriabin Mystery

For the 150th anniversary of Scriabin's birth, Vincent Larderet wanted to offer a broad overview of the composer's evolution. The chronological sequence takes us from the first post-Romantic pieces (Scriabin was only 14 when he wrote his remarkable Etude in C-sharp minor Op. 2 No. 1) to Scriabin's late, visionary style that set in motion a revolution in the musical language of the 20th century.
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Myriam Barbaux-Cohen:2022-09-27

Mel Bonis – Piano Works

Mélanie Bonis studied accompaniment, harmony, and composition at the Paris Conservatoire, where she shared the benches with Claude Debussy and received tuition from César Franck. She wrote more than 300 works, including many piano pieces, but was too modest for self-promotion, and even her admirers at the time could not overlook her gender. Saint-Saëns famously exclaimed: "I never imagined a woman could write such music!"
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Natalia Sokolovskaya:2022-09-26

Chopin – Nocturnes, Vol. 1

This is Natalia Sokolovskaya's third album for the OnClassical label, and the first volume in a complete survey of Chopin's Nocturnes. It contains the first ten Nocturnes and the famous posthumous C-sharp minor Nocturne. As a bonus for audiophiles, there is a second CD with the same pieces and the same takes, but recorded with a different microphone setup.
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Maria Gabrys-Henke:2022-09-25

Mikuli, Michalowski – Piano Works

Karol Mikuli and Alexander Michalowski are best known for being two of the greatest early experts on Chopin's music – Mikuli even studied with Chopin and was often the first one to hear his works. Among Mikuli’s own students, Aleksander Michalowski was the most influential in creating the Polish school of Chopin playing. Their original compositions were heavily influenced by Chopin, which can be heard on this album, recorded at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
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Louis Lortie & Hélène Mercier:2022-09-22

Debussy – Piano Duets

Regular duo partners Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie have recorded an all-Debussy program, featuring original piano duets as well as a number of arrangements of Debussy's solo piano pieces, and a two-piano version of his best-known orchestral work, La Mer. The album was recorded on Bösendorfer's newest model, the 280 "Vienna Concert" grand piano.
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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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