New Piano Albums

Ewa Skardowska:2023-07-25

Polish Piano Preludes Anew

These Preludes share their Polish origin, their state of neglect, and the time they were created – in the first 40 years of the 20th century. Musically speaking however, "they differ in almost everything". Their authors were renowned composers (Rózycki, Friedman), often outstanding pianists (Hofmann, Friedman, Gawronski, Wertheim), but also talented aristocrats like Jan Konopka and Wincenty Chrzanowski.
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Ketevan Sepashvili:2023-07-22

Moments – Chopin, Gabunia

The Georgian composer Nodar Gabunia studied at the Moscow Conservatory before returning to Tbilisi to teach at the State Conservatory. He pursued an international career as a concert pianist and composed a large number of works that feature modern compositional techniques and elements of modal harmonies, even though he never fully abandoned tonality.
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Jean-Jacques Bedikian:2023-07-19

Rachmaninov – Études-Tableaux

"When I was thirteen years old, I entered a competition in Paris, after which a professor came to me and gave me a CD of the Études-Tableaux. He said to me: “You will understand later, and you will see that it will be clear to you”. And that’s what happened, from the very first time I listened to it, I entered into this music as if I already knew it, as if I perceived the beating of a heart behind the score and the notes."
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Matthew Mills:2023-07-17

Bagatelles – Piano Music by Bernard Hughes

"This album brings together pretty much all my music for solo piano written over the course of more than 30 years, the earliest from when I was still at school and the latest written just weeks before being recorded, in October 2022. The inspiration was my pianist and friend, Matthew Mills, who suggested the project and who has put untold hours into learning and animating the music, some of which is very straightforward, and lots of which is very much not."
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Zoe Samsarelou:2023-07-14

Ek-stasis – Dionysus, Nymphs and Satyrs

All the pieces here are related to the myth of Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility, passion and pathos, whose worship is identified with mystical religious ecstasy/ek-stasis and whose permanent retinue consists of Pan, the satyrs, and the nymphs. Samzarelou writes that despite differences in time and origin, there are common elements in the way composers reconstruct this myth into music.
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Marc Peloquin:2023-07-11

Many Hands – The Piano Music of David Del Tredici

David Del Tredici is generally recognized as the father of the American Neo-Romantic movement in music and has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. He credits pianist Marc Peloquin with getting him back to writing music for piano after a 20 year hiatus. With the release of this 3-CD set, Peloquin has now recorded the composer's complete piano music.
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Orli Shaham:2023-07-08

Mozart – Piano Sonatas Vol. 4

During a journey to Munich in his late teens, Mozart wrote six “calling cards” to play at the homes of potential benefactors. Three of these — the Sonatas K. 280, K. 279, and K. 284 — form this disc, the fourth in Orli Shaham's cycle of Mozart’s piano sonatas. The musicologist Alfred Einstein would describe these pieces as “a microcosm of feeling and subtlety of form, but a very complicated one.”
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Quattro Mani:2023-07-06

Hallelujah Junction

Steven Beck and Susan Grace play a selection of 20th- and 21st-century music for two pianos. The name Hallelujah Junction comes from a small truck stop near the California–Nevada border. Composer John Adams said of the piece: “Here we have a case of a great title looking for a piece. So now the piece finally exists: the “junction” being the interlocking style of two-piano writing".
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Jorge Federico Osorio:2023-07-03

Conciertos románticos – Ponce, Castro

Jorge Federico Osorio has documented a wide variety of repertoire, but is especially noted as a great interpreter of Spanish and Mexican repertoire. Ricardo Castro and Manuel Maria Ponce made significant contributions to Mexican classical music, and their music reflects a synthesis of American and European traditions, with influences from Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy.
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Isata Kanneh-Mason:2023-06-30

Childhood Tales

Isata Kanneh-Mason evokes the magic of childhood on her third solo album, centred around Ernö Dohnányi’s now rarely performed Variations on a Nursery Song, expanding the well-known ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ into a truly virtuosic work. Subtitled “for the enjoyment of friends of humour, to the annoyance of others”, it was performed almost every year at the Proms from 1920s to 1950s.
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Izabella Simon & Dénes Várjon:2023-06-28

Mahler – Symphony No. 1, piano 4 hands

This transcription of Mahler's First Symphony was made by one of the best interpreters of Mahler’s music: the conductor Bruno Walter. "This immediate encounter with the work and with the genius of Mahler was a path of great discovery and an incredible adventure for us", say Izabella Simon & Dénes Várjon, husband and wife who form a piano duo with a special interest in rarely played works.
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Anna Zassimova:2023-06-26

Chopin – Ballades 2 & 4, Scherzo 4, Mazurkas & Waltzes

Anna Zassimova has an unusually broad artistic education, with degrees in musicology and art history. She has recieved a lot of praise for her interpretations of music by overlooked Romantic and modernist Russian composers such as Medtner, Catoire, Roslavets and Wyschnegradsky, and considers Chopin her great 'non-Russian' love.
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Aaron Pilsan:2023-06-24

Schumann – Kreisleriana, Geistervariationen, Widmann – Elf Humoresken

Jörg Widmann was obviously inspired by Schumann’s music when he composed his Eleven Humoresques. These pieces evoke Schumann already through their titles, but according to Aaron Pilsan, "even Widmann's musical language is very similar, even though their styles are obviously very different. The starting point...is from feelings, from the emotions and sentiments."
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Elizabeth Sombart:2023-06-23

Mozart – Piano Concertos 20, 21, 23, 27

Elisabeth Sombart has a strong relationship with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the conductor Pierre Vallet; they have previously made acclaimed recordings of Beethoven's complete Piano Concertos together. The four concertos on this new album belong to Mozart's greatest and span his last six years, 1785–1791.
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Josu de Solaun:2023-06-20

Nocturnes on the Margins

This live recording of a concert given by Josu de Solaun in 2019 offers a different interpretation of one of the most popular solo piano genres: the nocturne. Avoiding the canonical works by Chopin, he explores the less familiar margins of the repertoire: “This album of crepuscular thoughts and melting music is an invitation to the dream world: a journey to the far reaches of the night”.
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Olli Mustonen:2023-06-19

Rautavaara, Martinu – Piano Concertos Nos. 3

Premièred in 1999 by Vladimir Ashkenazy, to whom it is dedicated, Rautavaara's Piano Concerto No 3, subtitled Gift of Dreams, has managed to join the small group of concertos from the end of the 20th century that are now regarded as part of the established repertoire. Olli Mustonen pairs it with Martinu's Third Concerto, composed 50 years earlier.
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Zlata Chochieva:2023-06-15

Im Freien

Sensitive to nature and to the emotions it inspires, Zlata Chochieva has conceived this very personal album with a wide diversity of climates, from Schumann’s Waldszenen and Ravel's Miroirs to Bartók’s mysterious nocturnal music and Schultz-Evler's virtouso Arabesque on themes from The Beautiful Blue Danube.
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Emili Brugalla:2023-06-14

Granados – Goyescas

One of the most important works for piano in the Spanish repertoire, Goyescas was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya (1746–1828). The suite, subtitled Los majos enamorados, ‘Young people in love’, conjures up Spanish life in Goya’s time – gallant and sensual, melancholic and dark.
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Aris Alexander Blettenberg:2023-06-12

Hommage à Beethoven

Aris Alexander Blettenberg won first prize in the Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna in 2021, and continues to pay tribute to the composer. Here, the Sonata op. 101 is surrounded by Liszt's transcription of the Allegretto from the 7th Symphony, Schumann's unfinished Beethoven Variations, and Blettenberg's own transcription of the song An die Hoffnung.
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Simon Bürki:2023-06-11

Reminiscence

For his debut album Simon Bürki has chosen sixteen miniatures, most of them by Rachmaninov, including four contrasting Études-tableaux which range all the way from a lyrical melody to thrilling climaxes. The album also includes works by Liszt, Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin, largely bonded over themes of night and melancholy.
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Shorena Tsintsabadze:2023-06-10

Dedication – Schumann, Brahms, Liszt

Liszt published his Sonata in B minor in 1854 with a dedication to Robert Schumann in response to the latter’s dedication of his Fantasie in C to Liszt. Liszt loved the Fantasie very much but although he had played it to Schumann in private, he never performed it in public. Shorena Tsintsabadze combines the two monumental works on her new album.
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Giorga Tommasi & Carlo Maria Griguoli:2023-06-08

Rachmaninoff – Suites & Song transcriptions for 2 Pianos

Giorga Tommasi and Carlo Maria Griguoli are two thirds of the PianoS Trio, known for performing masterpieces of symphonic literature transcribed for three pianos by Griguoli. This recording includes Rachmaninov's two Suites for 2 Pianos, as well as Griguoli's transcriptions of songs by Rachmaninov.
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Luisa Imorde:2023-06-06

C. Schumann & C. M. von Weber – Piano Concertos

Luisa Imorde's previous albums have been dedicated to Beethoven/Wölfl, Bach/Kapustin, and Couperin/Messiaen, illustrating her predilection for interesting juxtapositions. The new CD features Clara Schumann's and Carl Maria von Weber's Piano Concertos, complemented by solo piano pieces.
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Geoffrey Duce:2023-06-05

Fantasies & Rhapsodies – C.P.E. Bach, McCabe, Schubert, Dohnányi

Since the Renaissance, keyboard composers have used the titles Fantasia and Rhapsody to designate a work that has a relatively free form, where they could allow their imaginations to take flight without the necessity of being restricted to previously existing models. Geoffrey Duce has chosen a program of both these forms for this recording with works spanning the Baroque to the 20th Century.
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