New Piano Albums

Matthieu Idmtal:2021-11-08

Grieg - Piano Sonata & Lyric Pieces

Grieg's Piano Sonata op 7, belongs to the unfortunate group of somewhat forgotten piano sonatas. Nevertheless, it contains all the elements so characteristic of Grieg’s genius: long lyrical melody lines, passionate drama, intimate moments of respite, nimble dance rhythms, and grandiose outbursts. Matthieu Idmtal follows it up with a selection of the composer's beloved Lyric Pieces.
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Shani Diluka:2021-11-05

The Proust Album

This album takes us back to a golden age of French music. Reynaldo Hahn’s rarely performed or recorded Piano Concerto is a gem of the early 20th-century repertoire. It is followed by a stroll through the musical-literary landscape of Proust, a friend of Hahn and admirer of Fauré, Debussy, Wagner, Strauss Franck and others.
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Gustav Piekut:2021-11-04

Towards the Flame

Both the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin and the Danish composer Rued Langgaard were musical loners, who believed that through their art they could light a sacred fire and pave the way for a spiritual world revolution. For both of them, the piano was a primary medium. On his new album, Gustav Piekut brings together these two feverish and explosive musical twins.
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Vittoria Quartararo:2021-11-02

Dutilleux - Complete Piano Music

These compositions illustrate Henri Dutilleux's sincere relationship with the piano, and trace the evolution of his very personal language – from the years working at Radio France (the short pieces of the suite Au gré des ondes were conceived as “fillers’’ between different broadcasts) until the time when he could live off his music alone, having achieved international recognition as a composer.
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Vladimir Ashkenazy:2021-10-25

J S Bach - English Suites 1-3

Vladimir Ashkenazy signed to Decca in 1963 and remains the longest-serving artist on the label. After a few releases with Russian repertoire, he went on with Bach’s Concerto in D minor, which was the start of his journey with a composer he reveres above all others. An astonishing 56 years and a lifetime’s experience of this timeless music separates that recording from the latest addition to Ashkenazy’s Bach discography, the English Suites Nos. 1-3.
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Lilit Grigoryan:2021-10-24

Mompou - Música callada

Mompou's "Música callada" (Silent Music) was inspired by the writings of the Spanish mystic, Saint John of the Cross: The composer said: "This music has neither air nor light. It is a weak heartbeat. It’s not meant to reach any further than a few millimetres in space, but it is meant to penetrate the greatest depths of our soul and the most secret regions of our spirit”.
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Arturo Nieto-Dorantes:2021-10-22

Albéniz - Iberia

Arturo Nieto-Dorantes has recorded and performed a lot of Mexican and Latin American music. But he is also one of few pianists to perform Albéniz's Iberia in its entirety - a cycle of twelve pieces of which Debussy once said: "Never has music achieved such diversified, such colourful impressions: one's eyes close, as though dazzled by beholding such a wealth of imagery."
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Eloïse Bella Kohn:2021-10-19

Bach - Art of Fugue

Composed towards the end of his life, this cycle of fugues can be regarded as Bach's artistic legacy. During his last months, Bach had gone blind, which is probably why the last fugue was left unfinished. On this album, Thierry Escaich has composed a new completion of the work.
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Nikolay Medvedev:2021-10-15

Russian Piano Masterpieces

For his debut album, Nikolay Medvedev has chosen to record works by three Russian masters - Rachmaninov's youthful Moments Musicaux, Medners one-movement Sonata in G minor opus 22, and Tchaikovsky's rarely performed Grand Sonata in G major opus 37.
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Gottlieb Wallisch:2021-10-10

20th Century Foxtrots, Vol. 3

Gottlieb Wallisch continues his ‘most surprising and consistently charming recording project' (NY Times) with a third volume of jazzy piano dances. It features composers from Central and Eastern Europe, from Misha Spoliansky’s hypnotizing Valse Boston ‘Morphium’ to Leonid Polovinkin’s entertaining and futuristic approach to the genre.
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Alexander Krichel:2021-10-08

Enescu & Mussorgsky

Alexander Krichel has brought together a couple of heavyweights for his first album with Berlin Classics. He combines Mussorgsky's masterpiece “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky, a central work of piano literature, with a rarely heard Suite by George Enescu, enhancing the formal language of the Baroque with Romantic and Impressionist timbres.
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Beatrice Rana:2021-10-05

Chopin - Etudes Op 25, Scherzos 1-4

Béatrice Rana: "I was 18 when I made my first Chopin recording after winning the Montréal International Musical Competition, and opted for the Preludes, which were my pièce de résistance in piano competitions at the time. A decade on, this new recording represents a different, more considered choice, tied to the unprecedented period we are currently living through."
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Ekaterina Litvintseva:2021-10-03

Pejacevic - Piano Music

When Ekaterina Litvintseva heard Blumenleben (‘Life of Flowers’) for the first time, she immediately resolved to find out more about the life and music of Dora Pejacevic(1885-1923). This resolution prompted her to investigate an extraordinary corpus of music, remarkable not least for its sheer diversity, which she has attempted to convey in this selection of her work for piano.
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Lukas Geniušas:2021-10-02

Chants populaires

Geniusas' critically acclaimed discography features Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and a lot of Chopin - he was the Silver Medalist in the 2010 International Chopin competition. Here he has chosen a less well-trodden path, exploring the genre of folk song as it appears in the work of three composers for the piano: Bartók, Tchaikovsky and Desyatnikov.
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Davide Cabassi:2021-09-30

Beethoven - Sonatas Nos. 16,17 & 18

Davide Cabassi was a finalist in the 2005 Van Cliburn competition and in the following years played in 35 US states. His discography to date includes music by Brahms, Schumann, Janacek, Mozart and many others. Mr Cabassi's ongoing series of Beethoven sonatas for the Decca label here reaches its fourth instalment.
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Christina Petrowska Quilico:2021-09-29

Retro Americana

Christina Petrowska Quilico's career output includes some fifty-plus albums, spanning a wide range of styles. Here she embarks on a journey through time, exploring an entire century's worth of North American piano music. From the atonal pioneer Henry Cowell and his contemporary Gershwin, she continues through the music of late legends such as Frederic Rzewski and Art Tatum, and their living colleagues Meredith Monk and Bill Westcott.
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Schaghajegh Nosrati:2021-09-28

J S Bach - Partitas, BWV 825-830

Schaghajegh Nosrati is highly regarded as a Bach interpreter. Her international breakthrough came through increasing musical collaboration with Sir András Schiff, who has praised the “astonishing clarity, purity, and maturity” of her musical approach. Previous albums include recordings of Bach's Keyboard Concertos and the Art of Fugue, but also of music by Alkan and Anton Rubinstein.
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Charles Owen:2021-09-26

Liszt - Années de Pèlerinage, Suisse

The awe-inspiring views Liszt encountered on his Alpine journeys of the 1830s all found exquisite musical depiction in his Années de pèlerinage, Suisse. Charles Owen: "During the first Covid lockdown of spring 2020, I became especially drawn to this music for its evocation of the natural world, its sense of beauty and liberation. Against the background of an unexpected homebound existence, the imagery of journeying took on extra meaning in my mind."
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Hanna Holeksa:2021-09-25

Tansman - Piano Music

Aleksander Tansman was a Polish composer of Jewish origin, who became a French citizen in 1938. His cycle of 24 Intermezzi, composed in the difficult period of the first months of World War Two, "explores in an excellent way the piano's timbral potential, encapsulating a range of emotional sound worlds in miniature forms." – Hanna Holeksa
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Alexander Gadjiev:2021-09-23

Live - Sydney International Piano Competition

This July, Alexander Gadjiev was nominated First Prize winner of The Sydney International Piano Competition 2021. The Sydney’s Artistic Director Piers Lane said, “The jurors all agreed that the level of this year’s competitors was outstanding. In Alexander Gadjiev we have an intelligent, communicative, elegant winner of extraordinary musical and pianistic prowess, totally ready to spread his wings."
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Francesco Pasqualotto:2021-09-22

Bartók - Piano Works

In Bartók's piano music, a technical complexity joins a very varied musical language, bearing influences from folk music as well as from the coloristic worlds of Debussy and Liszt, and from the ornamented style of Couperin. Francesco Pasqualotto: "Bartók is a man of a thousand faces and with this album we are trying to reveal some of them".
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Claire-Marie Le Guay:2021-09-20

Joies de l'âme - Franz Liszt

Claire-Marie Le Guay had much success with Liszt's works during the early part of her career. "Recording Liszt again is like finding the common thread of my life, after recording the Etudes d’exécution transcendante, then the two Concertos, the Sonata, Après une lecture de Dante, the 2nd Ballade, the two Légendes; finding this common thread to share it with you."
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Jean-Yves Thibaudet:2021-09-19

Carte Blanche

To mark his 60th birthday, Decca gave Jean-Yves Thibaudet "Carte Blanche" to create an album with music he hadn't recorded before. “I have made many recordings of mainstream repertoire, so I wanted to do something more personal and intimate. These are pieces I love deeply – some I’ve played for my whole life – and each one reflects a special moment for me, has a story.”
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Igor Levit:2021-09-17

On DSCH

This is a triple CD containing two gigantic 20th century cycles - Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, and Ronald Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH. For Igor Levit, Shostakovich's work "is a ritual of self-exploration and self-discovery," while the Passacaglia "is a veritable compendium of life, a kind of music that tells us of our responsibility towards the world as a whole."
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