New Piano Albums

Yuki Negishi:2024-05-13

Preludes – Arensky, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Gershwin

Yuki Negishi plays a selection of early 20th-century Preludes on her second solo album. Arensky's 12 Preludes Op. 63 are juxtaposed with the much more famous 10 Preludes Op. 23 by his student Rachmaninoff – both collections were published in 1903. They are followed by Ravel's beautiful single Prelude (1913) and Gershwin's jazzy collection of Three Preludes (1926).
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Jonathan Biss:2024-05-11

Beethoven 'Emperor' Concerto,
Brett Dean 'A Winter's Journey'

Starting in 2015, Jonathan Biss and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra have commissioned five composers to write a piano concerto in response to one of Beethoven's. In Brett Dean's A Winter's Journey, the piano soloist begins the piece from within the orchestra, seated at an upright piano with super sordino (or practice pedal). This muffled, indistinct sound may be seen as a metaphor for Beethoven’s worsening deafness.
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Andrea Molteni:2024-05-09

Beethoven – Piano Sonatas op. 106 & 110, Grosse Fuge (piano solo version)

25-year-old Italian pianist Andrea Molteni combines classical repertoire with exciting forays into 20th-century Italian composers like Petrassi and Dallapiccola. The most unique feature of his new Beethoven album is the inclusion of Louis Winkler's rarely played arrangement for solo piano of the monumental Grosse Fuge for string quartet, one of Beethoven’s last compositions.
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Erik Bertsch:2024-05-08

George Benjamin – Complete Piano Works

Sir George Benjamin studied composition with Olivier Messiaen and piano with Yvonne Loriod. His works for the piano were written during two distinct periods, between 1978 and 1985, and between 2001 and 2004. The most recent work, Piano Figures, not technically demanding and therefore well suited to young pianists, was premiered by students of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, to whom the collection is dedicated.
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Célia Oneto Bensaid:2024-05-06

Jaëll, Liszt – Piano Concertos No. 1, Mephisto Waltz No. 3

Marie Jaëll (1846–1925) was a remarkable pianist; the first in France to perform Liszt's complete works, and the complete Beethoven sonatas. As a composer, she earned acclaim from Brahms, Fauré, Saint-Saëns... But her most profound connection was with Liszt – for Célia Oneto Bensaid, these two "serve as wellsprings of inspiration; as composers and virtuosos, they embody freedom, self-transcendence, and an avant-garde spirit!"
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Sergei Babayan & Daniil Trifonov :2024-05-04

Rachmaninoff for Two – Suites 1 & 2, Symphonic Dances

Sergei Babayan’s first album for Deutsche Grammophon was Prokofiev for Two (2018), in partnership with the legendary Martha Argerich – an album critics said took “the piano duo to a new level”. During the Rachmaninoff year 2023 he teamed up with Daniil Trifonov – another formidable virtuoso – for this Rachmaninoff program, recorded live in Vienna.
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Mikhail Pletnev:2024-05-02

Brahms, Shor, Chopin

Pianist, conductor, composer, and leading cultural figure – all are significant facets of Mikhail Pletnev’s remarkable life and career, ever since his First Prize in the 1978 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. In this live recording from the Berliner Philharmonie, he offers personal interpretations of Brahms and Chopin, and presents his adapted version of Alexey Shor's Piano Sonata, rewritten in close collaboration with the composer.
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David Potvin:2024-04-30

Catharsis – Coulthard, Devaux, Derksen

'Catharsis' is an emotional experience in which difficult, often repressed feelings are released and transformed; tension is heightened until the perspective shifts and one enters a state of peace and tranquility. According to David Potvin, "all the works on this album contain elements of the cathartic experience." When Potvin recently toured with an all-Canadian program, these works by Cris Derksen, Jean Coulthard, and Keiko Devaux quickly became audience favorites.
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Anna Vinnitskaya:2024-04-27

Piano Dances – Ravel, Shostakovich, Widmann

Anna Vinnitskaya's new album consists mostly of 'Viennese' Waltzes – not the works by Johan Strauss that have defined the genre, but waltzes that are reflected, parodied, or thoughtfully reinterpreted by composers from later eras: Ravel, Shostakovich and Jörg Widmann. A further aspect of the program fascinates Vinnitskaya: ‘All these pieces make one feel as if returned to one’s childhood, for these three composers seem to be thinking about their own childhoods."
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Duo Bax-Chung:2024-04-26

Debussy and Ravel for Two

After meeting at the 1997 Hamamatsu Competition, Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung carried on a courtship by telephone and email while on separate tours, eventually marrying in 2004. They still have busy performance schedules both as solo artists and as a piano duo. The latest album features music by Debussy and Ravel, original works as well as transcriptions – such as Dutilleux’s two-piano version of the perennial favorite, Clair de lune.
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Yunchan Lim:2024-04-25

Chopin Études

Van Cliburn competition winner Yunchan Lim's previous releases include a Billboard-charting live performance of Liszt’s Transcendental Études. The video of his Cliburn performance of Rach 3 has become the most-watched version of that piece on the platform (14 million views). An exclusive Decca Classics artist, he now makes a studio debut as audacious as it is impressive: the 24 Chopin Études Opp. 10 & 25.
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Salih Can Gevrek:2024-04-24

Schumann, Bach, Rachmaninov – Concertos Without Orchestra

How can a pianist alone imitate the fullness of an orchestral ensemble, and even reproduce the dialogue between a soloist and an orchestra that takes place in a concerto? Salih Can Gevrek here attempts to offer a concrete answer to this with three works that exemplify the piano’s assimilation to the orchestra.
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Xiaowen Shang:2024-04-23

Music of Silence

Xiaowen Shang is a versatile pianist and harpsichordist with a repertoire from the Renaissance to contemporary music. Her all-Spanish debut album combines Antonio Soler’s eighteenth-century flamboyant sonatas with piano transcriptions of the sixteenth-century sacred composer Antonio de Cabézon, and Federico Mompou’s 20th-century masterpiece Música callada.
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Guillaume Bellom:2024-04-21

Richard Strauss – Piano Works

Guillaume Bellom was first struck by the musical language of the young Richard Strauss in the two sonatas for violin and cello – the orchestral dimension of the writing, the shimmering timbres, and his art of the extended phrase. "It occurred to me that his early work, and more particularly his piano works, had been all too rarely recorded".
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Yundi:2024-04-19

Mozart – The Sonata Project (Salzburg)

Although often associated with Chopin (he was the first Chinese and the youngest pianist in history to win the International Chopin Piano Competition), Yundi returns to his musical roots with the Mozart Sonata Project. He was captivated by Mozart already at the age of 7, and aims for his audience to experience a similar infatuation with the “singing, colorful, human tone of the most ingenious composer”.
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Valentin Magyar:2024-04-17

Rachmaninov – Sentimental Moments

Valentin Magyar plays a selection of Rachmaninoff's Preludes and Études-tableaux on his debut album. The young Hungarian pianist won gold medal at the Vienna International Music Competition and received the György Cziffra Talent Award in 2023. He is now doing his masters in Budapest with Gábor Farkas and Dénes Várjon, and simultaneously in Berlin with Kirill Gerstein.
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Sophia Weidemann:2024-04-16

Fanny Hensel – Das Jahr

Sophia Weidemann has been fascinated by the wealth of harmony and the variety of heart-rendering emotions in Fanny Hensel's das Jahr (The Year) ever since she first heard the work. On this album, letters and diary entries by Fanny (read in German by Tinka Kleffner) are interwoven between the pieces.
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Kristjan Randalu:2024-04-13

Schumann/Randalu – Dichterliebe

Kristjan Randalu has one foot in the improvised world of jazz and the other one in the traditional realm of classical music. His recasting in 2020 of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with saxophone legend David Liebman gained him mention in The New York City Jazz Record’s “Best of 2020” list. This is his solo take on Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe.
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Sofja Gülbadamova:2024-04-11

Ernst von Dohnányi – Piano Works

Here is a rare chance to hear piano music by the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi, a great pianist but now more famous for his brilliantly orchestrated symphonic works. Sofja Gülbadamova’s recording is particularly intriguing because she uses Dohnányi’s own Bösendorfer with its curved keyboard, kept by the Museum of Music History in Budapest.
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Nelson Goerner:2024-04-09

Liszt – B Minor Sonata,
Petrarch Sonnets etc.

Seventeen years after his first and highly praised recording of the Liszt B minor sonata, Nelson Goerner has felt the urge to re-record it, following a series of critically acclaimed concerts. In addition to the Sonata, Goerner treats us to the three beautiful Petrarch Sonnets, the mysterious Valse Oubliée no. 2, the sparkling concert etude La leggierezza, and the dramatic sixth Hungarian Rhapsody.
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Ketevan Sharumashvili:2024-04-07

Connected – Piano Transcriptions

The Georgian pianist Ketevan Sharumashvili likes the transformative process behind piano transcriptions. "For me these transformations are linked to the human condition. We ourselves also transform during our lifetime but in essence our emotions stay the same". The music on this cd is connected through times like a string of pearls from Bach and Rachmaninoff to Gershwin who, in turn, inspired Wild and Volodos.
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Alexandre Dossin:2024-04-05

George Walker – Complete Piano Works Vol. 1

This is the first of two albums presenting George Walker’s complete piano works, encompassing more than 60 years of his life, from the 1940s into the 21st century. During this period, his style matured to a level that could be easily compared to much more famous composers, such as Barber, Copland, or Bernstein. While the music of these composers have been thoroughly explored, Walker remains a hidden treasure.
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Korkmaz Can Saglam:2024-04-03

Solace – Handel, Rachmaninoff,
Ilayda Deniz Oguz

Korkmaz Can Saglam was the Grand Prize winner of the 2022 Vendome Prize, where he was also awarded the Recording Prize. "This album is not a collection of soothing pieces, but rather works which made me confront my thoughts and feelings, and eventually helped me to make peace with them. I hope to inspire, evoke thoughts and feelings through this powerful music which had an enormous impact on my musical and personal journey".
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Lucas Debargue:2024-04-01

Fauré – Complete Piano Music

On 4 CDs, Lucas Debargues commemorates the 100th anniversary of Gabriel Fauré’s death, presenting the composer's complete works for piano in chronological order – a project, reports Debargue, that has ‘transformed my life both as a person and as a musician.’ The music was recorded on the newly designed Paulello Opus 102 piano.
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