Ravel Reflections not only presents an impressive artistic statement from Anton Gerzenberg, but also a kind of musical self-portrait: the young pianist proves himself to be an interpreter with analytical acumen, playful wit, and a captivating virtuosity that always remains committed to expression. His playing combines clarity and refinement with passion and a fearless willingness to take risks-qualities that made him the winner of the 2021 Géza Anda Competition and which also characterize this album.

In 1975, coinciding with the inauguration of their new headquarters in Madrid, the Fundacion Juan March launched their Young Performers recitals, a series of presenter-led concerts for secondary-school students, performed by leading Spanish artists. In their first season, five outstanding Spanish pianists-all former fellows of the Fundacion-guided young listeners on a journey through the European piano tradition, from Mozart to Debussy. This remastering brings back to life the historical recordings of several performances from that first season. The selection included on the original 1976 LP, released under the title Conciertos para jovenes. Recital de piano romantico, constitutes a valuable documentary record of Spanish pianism, now returned to circulation following a meticulous remastering process.

Greek-Russian pianist Sasha Stychkina, born in December 2003 in Moscow into a family of musicians and filmmakers, is the youngest finalist and winner in the history of the Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris in November 2019. Today she presents her first recital, recorded at the Teldex studio in Berlin under the artistic direction of her teacher, the charismatic and renowned pianist Kirill Gerstein. A decidedly varied programme-Weber, Bartok, Ravel, Chopin, Liszt-it is by turns virtuosic, dance-like and spiritual. Sasha Stychkina also introduces us to a little-known composer, Alexei Vladimirovich Stanchinsky (1888-1914), a mystical figure, considered mad - he spent a year in a psychiatric hospital - who drowned at the age of twenty-six. A student of Taneyev, encouraged by Scriabin, and introduced to Tolstoy, the composer nevertheless had a bright future ahead of him. The Five Preludes (1907-1912, published posthumously in 1928), chosen by Sasha Stychkina, are particularly evocative and visionary.

Håkon Austbø's highly regarded Grieg collection, reissued with a recent recording of the four-hands repertoire to make the most complete available set of the composer's piano music - and, by extension, an open window onto the soul of this most poetic of Scandinavian romantics. Edvard Grieg was a talented child pianist when the violinist Ole Bull heard him play, and straightaway recognised in him a talent deserving of nurture. While he went on to write a symphony and a few other large-scale works, Grieg found his voice most of all through the piano, and through the songs without words which he called Lyric Pieces. In themselves, these are extensions of the Schumann/Mendelssohn lineage of instrumental tone-pictures, as well as translations of the lyric impulse that made him an equally successful song-writer, especially once he had married his cousin, Nina, and found in her the singer who understood both him and his music best. Nina also played the piano well enough to form a duo partnership with her husband. In that context, we may understand the transcriptions of his orchestral Holberg and Peer Gynt suites as not merely financially expedient hackwork, done to exploit the domestic market for enjoying orchestral classics at home, but as an intimate act of devotion. In the gently tripping neobaroque dances of the Holberg Suite, as brought to life by two pianists sitting side by side, we can eavesdrop on a touching communion. Meanwhile, the ten books of Lyric Pieces came to form a kind of diary to which Grieg returned and confided some of his most intimate and experimental thoughts through the course of his entire career. Whether evoking nature, a solitary thought, or a lover's gaze, the Lyric Pieces go straight to the heart of the matter, often with a disarming simplicity of manner which conceals some sophistication of form and technique. Awarding Håkon Austbø's cycle 10/10 for both performance and engineering, Jed Distler at Classics Today remarked: "Austbø's performances are consistently direct, idiomatic, and as natural as breathing... his virile and dynamically charged traversal matches Grieg's pianism in spirit... You won't find a better Grieg piano music bargain anywhere on the planet."

From the 1830s onward, Liszt's compositions increasingly acknowledged poetic, literary and philosophical impulses, often signaled through titles, epigraphs or extra-musical associations. This stimulus would later crystallise in his codification of the symphonic poem, but it was equally present in his keyboard music, where narrative, rhetoric and symbolism frequently replace abstract formal logic. A central expression of this aesthetic is Liszt's lifelong engagement with transcription and transformation. For him, the piano was not simply a self-contained instrument but a medium capable of absorbing the sonorities, gestures and emotional weight of voices and orchestras alike. His transcriptions were acts of interpretation rather than replication - creative reimaginings that sought the core meaning of a work and translated it into a pianistic language of heightened intensity. Choral music posed a particularly compelling challenge: the task of condensing collective utterance into the hands of a single performer allowed Liszt to explore the boundary between shared musical identity and individual contemplation. The works recorded here trace Liszt's artistic evolution from the assertive rhetoric of his early maturity to the compressed, exploratory language of his final years. Michael Kaykov's selection of repertoire brings together pieces that illuminate Liszt's habit of revisiting and reworking material across decades. Heard in this context, these works emerge not as peripheral by-products of Liszt's workshop, but as self-contained musical statements - compact, vivid, and eloquent - whose significance lies in their interconnections as much as in their distinctive voices.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

As a teenager, Franz Liszt created at least two virtuosic concertos for piano and orchestra, scores which now are lost. The three works gathered here first saw the light of day only a few years later, however, during the 1830's when Liszt’s career as a young, travelling virtuoso was at its height. The two numbered concertos, which Liszt revised extensively before letting them be published some 25 years after their conception, frame the single-movement Malédiction for piano and strings which Liszt composed in 1833 and revised in 1840, but which was never published in his lifetime. Stepping into Liszt's shoes for the present recording is Alexandre Kantorow, another very young man. Born in 1997, Alexandre is here supported by his father Jean-Jacques Kantorow conducting the Tapiola Sinfonietta, a team with a number of highly acclaimed recordings to their credit. The recording is Alexandre’s first for BIS, as well as being his début concerto disc, and represents a remarkable achievement by a hugely promising talent, as well as being a vibrant and exciting account of three impassioned scores.

Naruhiko Kawaguchi's A Journey with Beethoven presents a thoughtfully curated selection of shorter piano works and arrangements that reveal the composer's diverse character beyond the sonatas. Performed on three historical fortepianos from the Finchcocks Collection, the programme traces a musical and emotional path through bagatelles, rondos, dances, transcriptions and the Fantasy in G minor, alongside a rarely heard 1822 revision of Fur Elise. The recording highlights the evolving sound world of Beethoven's era while showcasing varied expressive styles, from wit and lyricism to introspection. Through historically informed performance, Kawaguchi offers a fresh perspective on familiar and lesser-known repertoire within a cohesive artistic narrative.

Dora Deliyska's programs are frequently dedicated to a specific theme that links the individual pieces together. At first glance, this does not appear to be the case with the present CD. Yet it would not be Dora Deliyska if there were not, in fact, a-perhaps mysterious-connection between the pieces performed. - Christian Kuhn

For this programme, Duo Diversitas has selected or created sophisticated arrangements that embody virtuosity and musical expression. In focusing on great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Marisa Minder and Evgeniya Spalinger explore the artistic refinement, lyrical grace and technical sophistication of the guitar and flute. The one original work for this combination is Hans Haug's Capriccio, a modern classic that alludes to Baroque procedure but within the context of exciting contemporary harmonies.

On her GENUIN debut release, splendid Polish pianist Aleksandra Mikulska presents Franz Liszt’s reminiscences of the great loves of his life: they include both people and places as well as his own works that had grown dear to him. With broad musical lines and a wonderfully sensuous tone, the Special Prize-winner at the 15th International Frédéric Chopin Competition breathes new life into some of the most beautiful works of the repertoire: the "Liebestraum" and "Hungarian Rhapsody" and the celebrated "Frühlingslied", an arrangement of the song by Robert Schumann – a true delight for piano lovers, and much more than just black and white!

Born in Odessa, pianist and conductor Boris Bloch has long been regarded as one of the most important interpreters of classical and romantic piano music. His large and ever expanding repertoire extends from Scarlatti and Bach, the Viennese Classicists, Chopin and Liszt, the German and Russian Romantics, and the most important composers of the 20th c. This new six-disc edition of Bloch live Liszt recordings contains the complete Annees de Pelerinage I-III, the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, paraphrases on opera themes, as well as polonaises, concerto etudes and other piano pieces.