New Piano Albums

Duo Ancelle-Berlinskaya:2024-02-23

Passage secret – Bizet, Debussy, Fauré, Ravel

In French piano music, the cycles Jeux d’enfants, Petite Suite, Dolly and Ma mère l’Oye have a special place: these four hand collections have become some of their respective composers’ best-known works. Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle are a symbiotic couple on and off stage, whose previous 8 albums have been well received and awarded by the international press.
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Orli Shaham:2024-02-21

Mozart – Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 5 & 6

The sense of wonder the three-year-old felt on her first encounter with Mozart in 1979 hasn’t diminished more than 40 years later. Orli Shaham was mesmerized when she heard her eldest brother practice the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor. With the present release, she has recorded all of Mozart's 18 Piano Sonatas, reaching the end of an exhilarating journey through music she has known all her life.
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Nathan Williamson:2024-02-19

Christopher Brown – 24 Preludes & Fugues

In 2011, Christopher Brown set himself the challenge of writing a book of 24 preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys before he reached his 70th birthday in 2013. In fact, the project took him a further six years. Pianist Nathan Williamson: "Despite unashamedly drawing on a wide spectrum of styles and influences… Brown’s 24 Preludes and Fugues stretched the limits of my ear and musical imagination."
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Igor Levit:2024-02-18

Mendelssohn – Lieder ohne Worte

Levit's release of 14 of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words and an Alkan Prelude is his personal response to the 7th October 2023 atrocities in Israel, and what he describes as an alarming rise of anti-Semitism around the world. Levit and his team gave their time pro bono for the recording, and proceeds will be donated to two German organisations fighting anti-Semitism.
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William Youn:2024-02-17

Boulanger, Fauré, Hahn

William Youn's first orchestral recording for Sony Classical is a double album in co-operation with Deutschlandradio Berlin, dedicated entirely to the exuberant flair of fin-de-siècle Paris with rare repertoire by Reynaldo Hahn, Nadia Boulanger and Gabriel Fauré - a musical excursion into the salons of the Belle Époque full of dazzling rediscoveries.
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Piotr Anderszewski:2024-02-15

Bartók, Janacek, Szymanowski

"The works recorded on this album carry within them a spirit of rebellion. Bartók reconnects with the essence of Hungarian folk music, its raw, vital quality, the wildness of its rhythms. Szymanowski, with the dances of southern Poland’s mountain folk... As for Janacek , he forges a direct connection with the essense of the Slavic soul at its most generous."
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Martin James Bartlett:2024-02-13

La Danse

Martin James Bartlett has long been drawn to Le Tombeau de Couperin – its reflective nature, incredible virtuosity, and Ravel’s uncanny ability to look both backwards and forwards in musical terms. On this all-French album, it's coupled with music by Couperin himself, Rameau, two four-hand waltzes by Reynaldo Hahn, and more Ravel: Pavane and La Valse.
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Nour Ayadi:2024-02-10

Carnaval

Nour Ayadi juxtaposes Schumann's Carnival of Vienna with Poulenc's Les soirées de Nazelles, the score of which reads: "The variations that form the center of this work were improvised at Nazelles during long country evenings wherein the composer played "portraits" for friends gathered around his piano. We hope that these variations… will have the power to evoke this game in the spirit of a Touraine region living room– with a window open to the night."
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Florence Millet:2024-02-09

Key Words – Piano parlando 1

Key Words asks the basic question of how to make the piano speak and comes up with some very original and interesting answers, mostly using compositions from the 20th century, some premier recording, but also Bach's Capriccio On the Departure of a Beloved Brother. Works that contain obvious or hidden messages, refers to poems, and includes language, words, syllables, and other human sounds.
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Max Philip Klüser:2024-02-06

Reflections

Max Philip Klüser has always been fascinated by musical transcriptions of literary or musical models. The starting point for this project was three Schubert songs, each reflected and transcribed for piano solo by a different, later living composer. Other “in-between worlds” visited on the album are Szymanowski's Masques, and Jörg Widmann's Sonatina facile modelled on Mozart.
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Leon McCawley:2024-02-03

Natural Connection

In a 21-track recital of landscape painting in sound, Leon McCawley traverses the inexorable turn of the year’s cycle. Popular pieces by Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Rave, Bartók, and Rachmaninov are bookended by two works invoking spring, Christian Sinding’s signature, Rustle of Spring, and Grieg’s lovely Lyric piece To the Spring.
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Agnieszka Przemyk-Bryla:2024-02-01

Jan Ekier – Piano Works

This is the first complete documentation of the piano works of Jan Ekier, an outstanding figure in Polish art and culture. Ekier was an outstanding concert pianist, an influential music editor, and a legendary teacher. His compositional work mainly dates back to his youth (1933-1951) and shows his infatuation with the works of Chopin, Szymanowski and with Polish folklore.
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Llyr Williams:2024-01-31

Robert Schumann – Piano Works

Llyr Williams’ long collaboration with Signum Records includes the 8-disc box-set ‘A Schubert Journey’ (2020), the 12-volume ‘Beethoven Unbound’ (2018), a ‘Wagner Without Words’ double album (2014) and highlights from Liszt’s ‘Années de pèlerinage‘ (2012). This double album continues the series of monographic recitals with a broad selection of Schumann's piano works.
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Elisabeth Leonskaja:2024-01-27

Schumann & Grieg – Piano Concertos

Elisabeth Leonskaja's third Warner release features Grieg’s and Schumann’s Piano Concertos – a classic coupling ever since the turntable era, with each work conveniently occupying its own LP side. Both works are in the key of A minor and share certain structural characteristics as well as their "emotional directness, heartfelt expressive qualities and great melodic appeal." (Jed Distler)
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Chiara Cipelli:2024-01-25

Poulenc – Piano Music

Poulenc experienced some of the most exciting artistic events of the modernist era, but being a man of independent spirit, in whom a constant touch of irony was interwoven with great love for the classical composers, he could never subscribe whole-heartedly to any particular school. He declared himself to be “not a cubist musician, and certainly not a futurist, nor an impressionist either. I am a musician without labels.”
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Behzod Abduraimov:2024-01-22

Shadows of My Ancestors

Behzod Abduraimov combines well-known works by Ravel and Prokofiev based on literary models (Gaspard de la nuit, Romeo & Juliet) with another colorful and evocative work that will be new for most listeners. In 1973, the Uzbek composer Dilorom Saidaminova composed The Walls of Ancient Bukhara, which offers a sonic view of the historic center of the Central Asian city founded four or five centuries B.C.
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Cédric Tiberghien:2024-01-20

Variations, Vol. 2

This is the second double album in Cédric Tiberghien's monumental Variations project, illustrating the evolution of a genre by juxtaposing Beethoven's variation cycles with works by composers from widely differing times, traditions, and parts of the world. Here we are taken on a journey from pre-baroque Netherlands (Sweelinck) to 20th century America (Feldman, Cage, Crumb).
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Tyler Hay:2024-01-18

Field – Nocturnes

After albums of Liszt, John Ogdon and Kalkbrenner, Tyler Hay turns his attention to the "father of the nocturne". John Field 'was the first to introduce a species which belonged to none of the established classes, and in which feeling and melody reigned alone’ (Liszt) The 18 Nocturnes, all inscribed to mademoiselles or connected ladies in Russian society, are a window on the salons of 19th century Europe.
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Fernanda Damiano:2024-01-15

Shostakovich and Pupils, Vol. 1

The isolation in which Soviet composers lived due to the “Iron Curtain” caused a delay in knowledge of their production in the West. Fernanda Damiano's juxtaposes Shostakovich's music with works by composers who lived in their teacher's shadow and have remained unjustly misunderstood: Alemdar Karamanov (1934–2007), German Galynin (1922–1966), and Boris Tchaikovsky (1925–1996).
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Radoslaw Sobczak:2024-01-14

Chopin – Piano Concertos, My Life...

Radoslaw Sobczak is a great advocate of old and new Polish music and has previously recorded music of Paderewski, Szymanowski, Marcin Tadeusz Lukaszewski (Piano Etudes, world premiere) and others. Here is his version of the two Chopin Concertos; like several great pianists before him (Balakirev, Cortot, Pletnev) Sobczak has rearranged and added to the orchestral part, in cooperation with Józef Domzal.
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Nataliya Tkachenko:2024-01-11

Fazil Say – Troy Sonata, 3 Ballads, Black Earth

This album was made in connection with a theatrical double bill at Stadttheater Kempten (Germany) in 2022, which told Homer’s myth of Troy from two perspectives: the play Cassandra by Christa Wolf and the Troy Sonata op. 78 by Fazil Say. The Troy Sonata was recorded shortly afterwards in the theatre’s main hall, while the 3 Ballads and Black Earth op. 8 were added at a later date.
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Kay Kyung Eun Kim:2024-01-08

Soundscape – Glass, Corogliano, Field

Kay Kyung Eun Kim's debut album on the Steinway label juxtaposes three modern composers. Philip Glass's Metamorphoses are quintessential examples of minimalist music; John Corigliano reinterprets classical forms and motifs, such as the Ostinato from Beethoven's 7th Symphony; and Brian Field’s “Three Passions” focuses on themes of global climate change.
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Ultra Piano Duo:2024-01-03

Clair de Lune – French Music for 2 Pianos

Masaya Tanaka and Takashi Sato met at a masterclass in Warsaw in 2005 and formed the Ultra Piano Duo five years later. Their third album features works for two pianos by a broad range of French composers from the 19th and 20th centuries: Saint-Saëns, Chaminade, Debussy, Ravel, Milhaud, Poulenc and Jolivet.
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Emil Gryesten-Jensen:2023-12-30

Beethoven – The Late Piano Sonatas

When 2020 didn't unfold as expected due to the pandemic, Emil Gryesten Jensen converted his planned performances of two of Beethoven sonatas (op. 106 & op. 111) into an artistic research project, using Beethoven to dive deeper into the music analysis method developed by Heinrich Schenker. Three years later he felt ready to commit a version of the resulting reinterpretations to recording.
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