New Piano Albums

François Dumont:2022-04-14

Chopin - Ballades & Impromptus

François Dumont's 2018 recording of Chopin's nocturnes won widespread acclaim. This is how he describes his new Chopin album: "Where the Ballades are expansive and dense, with their dramatic power rooted in epic and legend and their bright or sombre hues, the Impromptus are light and concise, elusive and ephemeral, airy, fragile and volatile in texture, and with delicate touches of colour that spread joy, effervescent or serene, on the fleet wings of their melodies."
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet:2022-04-12

Mozart - Concertos 22 & 23

The acclaimed Mozart Concertos series with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata reaches Vol. 6. The two concertos presented here were composed 1785–86, at a time when Mozart was working on Le nozze di Figaro, and was at the height of his fame as a composer and virtuoso pianist.
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Anastasia Safonova:2022-04-10

Vol vers l'étoile - Scriabin, Medtner, Pasternak

2022 marks the 150th anniversary of Alexander Scriabin’s birth. Anastasia Safonova pairs his music with that of Medtner and Boris Pasternak, a poet whose house was a meeting point for painters, musicians, writers and poets, where they played music, recited their works, and discussed everything, a manifestation of the great outburst of creativity that occurred in Russia at the turn of the century.
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Alexandre Kantorow:2022-04-07

Saint-Saëns - Piano Concertos 1 & 2

In 2019, Alexandre Kantorow became the first French pianist to win the gold medal at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition. His disc of Saint-Saëns Concertos 3-5 has recieved many awards and distinctions - here are the first two concertos, as well as a number of shorter works for piano and orchestra by the same composer.
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Martin James Bartlett:2022-04-04

Rachmaninov/Gershwin - Rhapsody

Martin James Bartlett made his BBC Proms debut in 2015 at 19 years of age, performing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He now has recorded the work with the same orchestra, pairing it with another celebrated Rhapsody from the same era: Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
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Daniel Barenboim:2022-04-01

Encores

Deutsche Grammophon is set to honor Daniel Barenboim throughout 2022 as he approaches his 80th birthday. Recorded in the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin - built on the initiative of Barenboim - Encores features miniature masterpieces by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Debussy and Albéniz.
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Costanza Principe:2022-03-30

Schumann - Piano Works

Costanza Principe presents a personal selection of Schumann works, favoring lesser-known pieces - with the exception of the renowned (and much feared) Toccata Op. 7. The album includes pieces from the opposite ends of the composer’s career - the tumultuous Allegro Op.8, a Beethovenian flexing of pianistic muscle from the 21-year-old composer, and his very last work, Gesänge der Frühe.
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Gabriel Stern:2022-03-27

Liszt - Études d'exécution transcendante

Like Chopin, Liszt transfigured the traditional étude for piano, creating piano works that are as relentless in their physical demands as they are in their lyrical and imaginative demands on the pianist. The Twelve Transcendental Studies, "studies of Sturm and Drang for, at the most, ten or twelve players in the world" (Schumann), remind us that Liszt was not only an unequalled virtuoso, but also a visionary poet and bold innovator.
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Mattia Ometto:2022-03-24

Medtner - Forgotten Melodies

Medtner achieved significant fame as a pianist and composer during his own lifetime. His music is one the one hand eminently learned, using a classical framework - he wrote 14 piano sonatas and three concertos. On the other hand there is a poignant lyricism, as in the sketches, arabesques, Skazki (Fables) and other miniatures. The "Forgotten Melodies" are a middle ground between these two categories.
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Lars Vogt:2022-03-21

Mendelssohn - Piano Concertos, Capriccio Brilliant

Lars Vogt has increasingly been working with orchestras as a conductor and is now Music Director of Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. Last year he was diagnosed with cancer, but has continued to play while receiving treatment. "I celebrated it for myself a little, the fact that in my condition I was at all able to play these notes – after twelve chemotherapy sessions, where it was said to me that I possibly would no longer be able to play the piano. That this now still could be done!"
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Anna Petrova:2022-03-19

Slavic Heart (Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Vladigerov)

Through the music of four composers, three Russian and one Bulgarian, Anna Petrova explores some of the essential elements of Slavic music. In her detailed and well-written program notes, she identifies six "cultural tropes" that tie the music on this album "in a beautiful ribbon of interdependence": Nature, Songfulness, Love, Bells, The Tragic, and Wit.
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Catalin Serban:2022-03-17

Resemblances (Chopin, Scriabin)

Scriabin was and remained an outsider, but some of his early works are reminiscent of Chopin, as many of the titles reveal, such as Préludes, Études and Nocturnes “At first I was interested in both composers independently of one another,” explains Catalin Serban. “Then I noticed the closer connections. Now, Scriabin seems to me like a continuation of what Chopin developed.“
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Francois-Frederic Guy:2022-03-14

Révolutions (Debussy, Murail)

François-Frédéric Guy links Debussy with the writing of Tristan Murail, a leading exponent of so-called “spectral” music. According to Guy, Murail’s pieces "have the clarity and elegance that are identified as the hallmarks of French music of the first half of the twentieth century...We are never certain of the harmonic universe surrounding us, but we’re never lost either. For me, this is an almost ideal mode of musical expression in the twenty-first century."
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Sara Aimée Smiseth:2022-03-11

Backer Grøndahl - Piano Works

Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as one of the 19th century’s greatest virtuoso pianists, Agathe Backer Grøndahl was also a pioneer among women composers, juggling marriage, motherhood and an extensive career. She was taught by Liszt in Weimar, and as one of Norway’s most respected composer-pianists, created a large body of work that displays colourful stylistic variety and poetic breadth.
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Elisabeth Leonskaja:2022-03-08

Mozart - Complete Piano Sonatas

Leonskaja has signed an exclusive contract with Warner, renewing a relationship that dates back to the 1980s. "It is a joy and an honour to welcome back the legendary Elisabeth Leonskaja, who has made so many revered recordings for the label in the past. With her recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, she has reached a new discographic landmark." - Bertrand Castellani, VP A&R Warner Classics & Erato
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Beatrice Berrut:2022-03-05

Jugendstil - transcriptions and paraphrases

"How can one come to terms with being a pianist madly in love with Austro-German post-Romantic music, which forsook one’s instrument in favour of the orchestra? Love shrinks from no sacrifice, least of all from countless hours of work… To transcribe is to pay homage to the genius of a music whose essence does not change along with its form, and to reconnect with the universality of nineteenth-century thought."
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Jan Lisiecki:2022-03-02

Night Music

In a kind of follow-up to his album with Chopin's Nocturnes earlier this year, Deutsche Grammophon now releases selected tracks of Jan Lisiecki’s Würzburg recital in 2018, where he explored other parts of the universe of "night music": Ravels Gaspard de la Nuit, Schumann's Nachtstücke, and Mozart's Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
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Ivo Pogorelich:2022-02-26

Chopin - Nocturnes 13 & 18, Fantasy Op. 49, Sonata No. 3

Eccentric or visionary? Ivo Pogorelich has always polarized opinion. And Chopin has always played a central role in his career, from the oft-mentioned moment when Martha Argerich angrily left the hall after Pogorelich did not make it to the finals in the Warsaw Chopin Competition. This is his fifth Chopin album, devoted to the composer's late works.
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Rebeca Omordia:2022-02-22

African Pianism

Rebeca Omordia has been hailed as an “classical music pioneer” (BBC) and a “game changer” (Classical Music). Based in London, she has launched the city's first ever African Classical Concert Series; this is her second album featuring only African composers.
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Klára Würtz:2022-02-20

Bach - Goldberg Variations

Klara Würtz is a prolific recording artist with her main focus on the Classical and Romantic repertoire - her complete Mozart Piano Sonatas were met with especially great critical acclaim. For her first recording of a Baroque work she has chosen the iconic Goldberg Variations.
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Lowell Liebermann:2022-02-18

The Devil's Lyre - Piano Music of David Hackbridge Johnson

Only since the release on record of some of his symphonic works has David Hackbridge Johnson's music become better known. These recordings were also what led Lowell Liebermann to discover Hackbridge Johnson's immense pianistic output, which among other things includes 19 sonatas, and an epic 65-minute work entitled Tributes.
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Edna Stern:2022-02-17

Schubert on Tape

Edna Sterns recordings have recieved such awards as Diapason d’Or, Arte Best CD, and Gramophone Critic’s Choice of the Year. Yet her recording experiences has led her to conclude that today’s massive use of digital editing "has done more to hinder music than to serve it." She therefore decided to follow in the footsteps of her favorite pianists from the golden age, press the reset button, and record on analogue tape.
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Jakub Kuszlik:2022-02-14

Brahms & Chopin

Jakub Kuszlik was the somewhat reluctant participant in the recent 18th International Chopin Competition, who ended up with a shared 4th Prize and a Special prize for best performance of Mazurkas. On this album, produced by the Polish Radio, he couples Chopin (a selection of Mazurkas, the B minor Sonata and F minor Fantasy) with late Brahms: the Fantasies op 116 and the Piano Pieces op 119.
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Hortense Cartier-Bresson:2022-02-12

Bach, Berg, Schoenberg, Webern

The idea of this programme came to Hortense Cartier-Bresson when working on the Toccatas of Bach. The counterpoint and numerous chromaticisms in Bach’s music sounded like a call for the post-romantic music of the Second Viennese School, and she hopes that the works of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern will be enriched by this alignment with the Toccatas.
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