New Piano Albums

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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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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