New Piano Albums

Aniele Steininger:2024-07-28

Tradizione e libertà – Scarlatti, Katzer, Hensel

The Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti's more than 550 single-movement sonatas influenced numerous composers across all eras, from his contemporary Bach, Chopin, and 21st-century artists such as Georg Katzer. The pieces by Fanny Hensel that close this album also have an Italian connection; they were all inspired and composed during her long-awaited and very formative trip to Italy in 1839-1840.
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Mishka Rushdie Momen:2024-07-25

Reformation

Mishka Rushdie Momen makes a surprising, personal, and highly enjoyable Hyperion debut, offering pearls of Renaissance keyboard music very rarely heard on a modern Steinway grand piano, bringing new perspective to the music of Byrd, Sweelinck, Gibbons and Bull. "Musically speaking, exploring this repertoire on the piano gives me a sense of encountering a palace of riches... I would love it if works from this period were to become fully integrated into the modern pianist’s canon."
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Anna Zassimova:2024-07-23

Defying Destiny

Designed as "a journey through the musical landscape of Russian destiny", Anna Zassimova's new album features Shostakovich, Medtner, and neglected works by Catoire, Mosolov, Schnittke, and Zaderatsky, all of whose works seem like parables of implacable destinies against which it seems futile to struggle, but which must be defied.
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Sandrine Erdely-Sayo:2024-07-22

Majestic Liszt

"Franz Liszt’s music has been an inspiration for me from a very young age and Majestic Liszt represents a childhood dream that immerses us in the poetry of Lamartine. It is a recording full of spirituality, love, and poetic thoughts." Sandrine Erdely-Sayo pours every ounce of her being into capturing the contemplative and song-like quality that pervades Liszt’s middle-to-late repertoire.
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Mikael Ayrapetyan:2024-07-20

Khachaturian – Ballet Transcriptions, Masquerade Suite

Mikael Ayrapetyan's recordings of music from his homeland Armenia have been met with admiration. Aram Khachaturian produced two ballet masterpieces – Spartacus and Gayane, symphonic in conception and, in the case of Gayane, marked by the use of leitmotifs. These piano arrangements maintain the texture and clarity of the original orchestral scores, preserving the essence of Khachaturian’s music.
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Freddy Kempf:2024-07-18

Matt Dibble – 24 Preludes & Fugues

Matt Dibble suddenly and tragically passed away in 2021 shortly after completing his 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo piano, a collection that showcases remarkable versatility, blending neo-Baroque, jazz, pop, and modernist influences into a deeply personal collection crafted over six years. Despite never meeting the composer, Freddy Kempf undertook the recording of Dibble's work with great enthusiasm.
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Karim Said:2024-07-15

Beethoven, Mozart, Schoenberg, Webern

Karim Said's previous album ‘Legacy’ delved into the relationships between various composers and their protoges, such as Arnold Schoenberg and his pupil Anton Webern, and Schoenberg’s role model Johannes Brahms. Now he explores the two Viennese schools and the evolution of music in Europe through works by iconic composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Schoenberg & Webern.
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KaJeng Wong:2024-07-13

Mostly Bach

"I'm returning to the source, to the music of two divine composers", KaJeng Wong said about his 'Mostly Bach, All Mozart' concert series. Two live albums were recorded; for the first one Wong has selected his favorites of the French Suites, English Suites and Partitas, but also a Scarlatti Sonata and the famous Petzold Minuet formerly attributed to Bach.
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Robert D Levin:2024-07-10

Mozart – Piano Concertos K503, K505, K595

This album marks the 50th anniversary of the Academy of Ancient Music and is the culmination of a monumental 30-year project. The collaboration between Christopher Hogwood and Robert Levin began in 1993 with the ambitious goal of recording Mozart's complete works for keyboard and orchestra. ‘This cycle is a central element both in Christopher Hogwood's legacy as founder and director of AAM and within my own career,’ comments Levin.
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Olga Pashchenko:2024-07-09

Mozart – Piano Concertos 20 & 23

This is part of Olga Pashchenko's decade-long project to record and tour all the Mozart concertos. Concertos 20 & 23 represent an almost dramatic, pre-Romantic theatricality and are described by Nicolas Derny as precursors of two of Mozart's greatest masterpieces: the Requiem and Le nozze di Figaro. Olga Pashchenko plays a replica of an Anton Walter fortepiano (ca. 1792) built by Paul McNulty.
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Élisabeth Pion:2024-07-08

Amadeus et l'Impératrice

Élisabeth Pion explores rarely performed works by French composer Hélène de Montgeroult, contemporary of Mozart and nicknamed “L’Impératrice” by some of her admirers. Montgeroult composed her Piano Concerto No. 1 by transcribing parts of two violin concertos by her friend Giambattista Viotti. The album also includes Mozart’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 24.
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Johannes Obermeier:2024-07-07

Brilliants

The works recorded here are like brilliants, the epitome of cut diamonds: "They show technical sophistication, as well as waltz-like, noble subjects which evoke majestic and richly decorated ballrooms before the mind’s eye. The works also mirror each other, as in the etudes of Godowsky and Chopin and in the relationship of Carnaval with my own composition Thema mit Variationen über A-S-C-H". (Johannes Obermeier)
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Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy:2024-07-05

Schubert, Desyatnikov

"On either side of the Fantasy – a major and very famous work – we wanted to place less readily accessible scores. There is the Divertissement, which…seems to be the antithesis of the Fantasy, which is such an architecturally impressive piece…Trompe-l’œil meanwhile is like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, which, smiling inscrutably, materialises (sometimes only partially) and gradually fades out at will."
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Juho Pohjonen:2024-07-03

Rameau, Scriabin – Visionaries of the Keyboard

Rameau and Scriabin may appear as distant stars in the firmament. Yet Juho Pohjonen sees striking affinities: "Rameau’s harpsichord compositions, while precise and ordered, are never mechanical, bringing an emotive fluidity to the elegance of the Baroque. Scriabin approached the piano with a similar blend of precision yet freedom."
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Jennifer Fichet:2024-07-01

Amy Beach – Une prodige empêchée (A Prodigy Held Back)

A child prodigy pianist and yet, as a woman, deprived of a high-level musical education, Amy Beach nevertheless became the first woman composer to be acknowledged in the United States. Snubbed by publishers after her death despite a brilliant and esteemed carreer, her very rich catalogue for solo piano deserves to be rediscovered.
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Pierre Solot:2024-06-29

Ernesto Lecuona – Piano Music

"Lecuona’s music is a blend of romantic virtuosity, Cuban dances, passionate outpourings, evocations of travel, and a few decadent relics of 19th-century Vienna… It is the music of a crooner on the piano who gives all of himself, his excesses and his miracles, in total sincerity; by cultivating a wildly imperfect humanity, his music is an injunction to joy!" – Pierre Solot
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Emmanuel Despax:2024-06-27

Liszt – Dante Sonata, Sonata in B Minor, etc

Emmanuel Despax has always been captivated by the drama, scope, and artistry of Liszt's music – his remarkable ability to make the piano emulate a whole orchestra, and the fact that he foresaw many stylistic shifts of the early 20th century. The repertoire selected for this album embodies a duality of light and darkness, heaven and hell, pivotal themes in Liszt’s artistic expression.
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Bertrand Chamayou:2024-06-26

Cage²

John Cage invented the "prepared" piano at the beginning of the 1940s – by placing a variety of felt, metal, and rubber objects between the strings, he created a wholly new soundworld, sometimes bright and metallic, sometimes muffled and mysterious. This album takes its title from a stage show featuring Bertrand Chamayou and dancer Élodie Sicard, where four differently prepared pianos were used, each in a corner of the stage (“Cage squared”).
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Guoda Gedvilaite:2024-06-24

Bach – Echoes of Eternity

Featuring works by Johann Sebastian Bach at its core, this recording interlaces Bach's original compositions, his arrangements of other Baroque pieces, and romantic transcriptions by famous pianists such as Wilhelm Kempff and Egon Petri. "These musical and personal reminiscences create a temporal bridge between past and present, which I traverse through my thoughts and musical interpretations."
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Aurélien Pontier:2024-06-20

Vienna - Joyful Apocalypse

This album is dedicated to the last years of Imperial Vienna, and is dominated by waltzes such as virtuoso Strauss transcriptions and Ravel's La Valse. “A veritable musical metaphor for the suicide of Europe that was the Great War, both apotheosis and apocalypse. We also hear evocations of Schubert, Liszt, Mahler and Kreisler, all imbued with a kind of nostalgia that belongs only to this mythical city.”
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Kun-Woo Paik:2024-06-17

Mozart – Piano Works 1

Pianist Kun-woo Paik has released his first-ever Mozart album, the first part of a planned trilogy. Featuring Sonatas 12 & 16 and several other works, it marks a significant departure from Paik's usual repertoire, as he has never recorded Mozart before despite a 68-year-long career, and an extensive discography of more than 30 albums.
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Reed Tetzloff:2024-06-15

Beethoven – Piano Concertos 4 & 5

"The impossibly tender solo piano opening of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto has haunted me from my childhood. I immediately knew that G major chord was different: within its introspection lay a power that could calm the whole world... I came to the Fifth Concerto later in life, but it occupies an equally special place in my heart… Here is a vast drama, where the valiant soloist singularly leads the orchestra into battle." (Reed Tetzloff)
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Vardan Mamikonian:2024-06-12

Invitation à la Danse

Vardan Mamikonian devotes this album to pieces linked to the art of dance from different eras and cultures. "Dance has always been a source of entertainment and joy, but it can also represent more sombre occasions, with pomp and grandeur. The Chaconne, for example, has become both tragic and sublime over time... Chopin's Mazurkas can be rustic and folkloric, haunting or lyrical, even dramatic. In short, dance can express diametric opposites and unite those opposites at the same time."
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Genny Basso:2024-06-10

Neapology

When Genny Basso listened to his mother playing Neapolitan songs on the piano, a musical passion began that he has continued to cultivate along with his classical training. At some point, however, he realized that the Neapolitan tradition deserved a larger and more exclusive space in his artistic production. "It’s my personal way to thank a unique land, whose everlasting creativity is an unlimited source of inspiration."
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