With this CD box set, 35-year-old pianist Sunwook Kim presents a first-class curated selection of works by composers Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and César Franck. Beethoven's piano sonatas hold a special place in Sunwook Kim's repertoire. This box set contains recordings of his most famous sonatas, among others No. 8 "Pathétique", No. 21 "Waldstein" and the last three sonatas op. 109-111. With recordings of Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Myung-Whun Chung, the Sonata No. 3 and the Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118, Sunwook Kim highlights his deep understanding of the composer's music. The collection is completed by a sensitive interpretation of the emotionally charged and highly complex work "Prélude, Choral et Fugue" by French composer César Franck.

One of Gramophone's Best Classical Recordings of 2022!

This recording brings together two of the greatest works of the Classical era in transcriptions for solo piano by two of the greatest pianist-composers of the Romantic era, resulting in two of the most thrilling experiences that nineteenth-century pianism has to offer. Successfully marrying the unique charac­teristics of the piano to the defining features of Beethoven’s orchestral writing, Franz Liszt is showed here at his most coloristic. He vividly captures the rapid scene shifts and mood changes of Beethoven’s Eroica and exploits not only the piano’s ability both to whisper and to roar, but also the power and intensity of silence. In Mozart’s 20th piano concerto, Charles-Valentin Alkan takes on a different challenge as he masterfully weaves the orchestral and solo piano parts into a single tapestry that brims from start to finish with piano writing of startling inventiveness and originality.

These two pianistic tours de force are presented here by Paul Wee – also a barrister specializing in commercial law at Essex Court Chambers in London – whose astonishing technique and passion for nineteenth-century pianism have been highlighted on acclaimed recordings dedicated to music by Alkan and transcriptions by Thalberg.

REVIEWS:

[Paul Wee's] fleet basic tempos for the opening movement and the Scherzo raise the bar for lightness, crisp articulation, and forward moving intensity, making his colleagues sound thick by comparison. Wee’s remarkable technique particularly impresses in the Finale’s incisively delineated counterpoint. What staggeringly even runs!–not to mention Wee’s ability to play rapid left-hand octaves more proficiently than most pianists can play single lines.

The main challenge of Alkan’s solo piano transcription of Mozart’s D minor concerto is to differentiate solo passages and orchestral tuttis by way of phrasing, touch, voice leading, smart pedaling, and dynamic control. Wee does this brilliantly throughout.

[A] transcendent achievement.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Zhu Xiao-Mei has taken an important place in the classical music world, not least in view of her valuable interpretations of Bach's music. This CD box set combines other key works by the pianist from Scarlatti, Haydn and Mozart to Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, testifying to her ability to express a wide range of styles and epochs through her unique artistic vision and tonal sensitivity. These recordings, recorded between 1995 and 2011, are the result of an intense exploration of the different characters of the six composers and are indicative of their interpreter's Œuvre.

These Bavarian Radio recordings, first released in 2005, constitute Rudolf Serkin's third and final edition of the Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos, and were the only performances to be recorded in the concert hall, not in the studio. As such, they fittingly complete both his discography and his artistic legacy as one of the 20th century’s indisputably great pianists. This jewel case presentation, complete with booklet notes in German and English, is a re-release of the original 3-album box set that went out of stock following healthy sales.

REVIEWS:

For at least a half century Beethoven’s piano concertos played a central role in Rudolf Serkin’s repertoire. Yet out of all the Serkin Beethoven concerto cycles on disc, the present one, recorded over the course of three concerts in October and November of 1977, offers the most consistent artistic and sonic satisfaction.

The slightly distant yet attractively robust engineering conveys a cogent sense of concert hall-realism, and not just to the benefit of Rafael Kubelik’s superb Bavarian musicians. It also reveals Serkin’s elusive, difficult-to-record sonority in more flattering, three-dimensional light than the gaunt, often monochrome impression one gleans from his Columbia Masterworks sessions. As a result, the concentration and inner tension Serkin brings to the slow movements comes off with more warmth and sustaining power.

Although Serkin at 74 may not have been the impetuous, fiery virtuoso in the first three concertos’ finales that he was in his 40s, when he recorded them for CBS Masterworks, his technique nevertheless is still assured, alert, and responsive, and far more energized than in his relatively careful and labored collaborations with Ozawa.

However, Serkin must have drunk from the fountain of youth before hitting the stage for the Choral Fantasy (Kubelik, too, for that matter). The performance radiates inspiration from start to finish, highlighted by Serkin’s ardent yet cannily structured opening cadenza, the chamber episodes’ zestful give and take, plus massed choral and orchestral tuttis that at once communicate elemental power and textural clarity. Let’s hope this major addition to Serkin’s discography will encourage Sony not to leave its own complete Serkin edition hanging.

For all fans of the pianist and/or the conductor, this release is a must.

--ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

This recording of Serkin from 1977 highlights a 20th-century great who brought musical purpose and intellectual rigour to every detail. Serkin ranks among the greatest of 20th-century pianists; his repertoire ranged from Bach to Reger, but Beethoven was always at its very heart. In the autumn of 1977, in the Herkulessaal in Munich, he played all five Beethoven concertos as well as the Choral Fantasy in a series of concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Rafael Kubelík, another musician who, like Serkin, always put himself at the service of the music. Recordings of those performances were first released on disc in 2005...their reissue now makes available again what is in every respect a historic musical document.

Serkin was never interested in ingratiating himself through honeyed phrases or silken tone. Instead in these interpretations there is musical purpose and intellectual rigor in every detail. Whether it’s the almost combative muscularity he brings to the piano’s first entry in the third concerto, or the instant authority of his torrential opening to the Emperor, it sets the tone for all that follows, constantly drawing equally intense responses from Kubelík and his superb orchestra. The accounts of the slow movements are just as remarkable; there’s a hymn-like calm to the Largo of the third, a consoling sweetness to the fourth’s exchanges between the soloist and the orchestra. All are in short, remarkable performances, not only among the finest available on disc, but further reminders of just how peerless a Beethoven interpreter Serkin was.

--The Guardian (Andrew Clements)

The Rautio Piano Trio returns to Resonus with this second volume of Beethoven’s Piano Trios, recorded on period instruments. The album features his Op. 11 trio – ‘Gassenhauer’ – together with his Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 3, showcasing the young composer’s early mastery of the genre; and his virtuosic Variations for Piano Trio Op. 44. This is the culmination of the Trio’s wider project charting the evolution of the piano trio from its emergence in the mid-eighteenth century, with the music of J.C. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, and Haydn, through to Beethoven’s complex and mature realization of the genre.

As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. With his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, he not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which was to remain a reference point well into the twentieth century. After the first two concertos, which still closely follow the models of Haydn and Mozart, Concerto No. 3 marks a profound stylistic change. In the piano part, Beethoven pushes the instrument to its limits, leading commentators to remark that he was writing for the piano of the future. This trend continued and reached its fullness in the Fourth and Fifth Concertos, which today rank among the great composer’s most admired works.

In 2009, Haochen Zhang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then he has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. He now performs the five Beethoven concertos supported by the prestigious Philadelphia Orchestra under its principal guest conductor, the charismatic Nathalie Stutzmann.

REVIEWS:

In a crowded pool of complete Beethoven piano concerto recordings, young Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang makes an impressive splash with his traversal of one of the most imposing cycles in the entire repertoire. With French conductor Nathalie Stutzmann leading the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zhang deftly handles Beethoven’s fiendish runs and cadenzas throughout these five imposing works. Most memorable are the 3rd and 4th concertos, which have the most balance between urgency and delicacy.

-- The Flip Side

Giorgi Gigashvili is only twenty-two, but he is already hitting the headlines: now a pupil of Nelson Goerner, he is a protégé of Martha Argerich, who gave him the urge to play the piano alongside his first love, pop singing: at the age of thirteen, he was a contestant in The Voice in his homeland, Georgia, and won the prize! A few years later, Argerich discovered him at a piano competition, and he went on to win prizes at several more, including the Hortense Anda-Bührle Prize at the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich in 2021. Another high-flying mentor, the violinist Lisa Batiashvili, asked him to play him the piano on her recording of the Franck Violin Sonata. His free and spectacular playing impresses, his creativity and personality astonish. Here he presents his first recital, revealing his palette of colours: Scarlatti, Beethoven, Scriabin and Messiaen. But never far away is his shadow, the singer of the electro band Tsduneba (‘temptation’ in Georgian) which he founded with his friends.