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Giuliani: Complete Guitar Works

Tactus

Available as CD

~~$29.99~~ $20.99

Mar 05, 2021

The project of the musicologist Nicoletta Confalone and of the guitarist Federica Artuso is aimed at the discovery of Emilia Giuliani, illegitimate daughter of the famous Mauro Giuliani that, with his guitar and his compositions, conquered Vienna, the capital of 19th century music. Emilia lived her entire life in a continuous state of difficulty and discomfort, dying of typhus at the age of only thirty- seven. The adverse events of her life and her condition as a woman (considering that in her days it was almost impossible to express her talent as an artist) did not prevent her from reaping flattering successes from audiences and critics in the many European stages of her unfortunately short life: suffice for all the quotation of some Viennese critics who, after a concert she shared with Franz Liszt, exclaimed with admiration: "Every finger, one Liszt!". In addition to her amazing skills as an instrumentalist, she was also appreciated for her music that she managed to publish with the major publishers of the time: Giovanni Ricordi in Milan and Artaria in Vienna. This double album includes her complete work for guitar, for the first time on an historic instrument, a 1830 René Lacote.

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Giuliani: Complete Guitar Works

~~$29.99~~ $20.99
CD

Tactus

Mar 05, 2021

TC810790

Liszt: Transcendental Etudes / Beisembayev

WARNER CLASSICS

Available as CD

$17.28

Dec 20, 2024

Alim Beisembayev, winner of the 2021 Leeds International Piano Competition, makes his album debut on Warner Classics with solo works by Liszt, including seven of the ambitious Etudes d'execution transcendante. Born in Kazakhstan and trained primarily in the UK, Beisembayev has been praised by leading critics for the spellbinding Polish and maturity of his playing. "The Transcendental Etudes of Liszt are amongst the most challenging piano works ever written by any composer," he says. "Frequently described as tone poems, these inspirational works take the etude to a new level... Since early childhood, I had been inspired by performances of these works by legendary pianists such as Cziffra, Richter and Kissin, never dreaming that I would one day be performing them myself... However, like most young pianists, the challenge, for me, was the attraction, and I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to record these pieces." This debut album follows the digital release in Autumn 2021 of a programme marking Beisembayev's victory at Leeds and comprising works by Scarlatti, Ligeti and Ravel.

Liszt: Transcendental Etudes / Beisembayev

$17.28
CD

WARNER CLASSICS

Dec 20, 2024

WCL729645.2

COMPLETE ERATO & FONIT CETRA RECORDINGS

ERATO

Available as CD

$90.49

Mar 20, 2026

Maria Tipo's extraordinary talent was so evident from a young age that she was nicknamed the "Neapolitan Horowitz." After her early success at the Geneva International Music Competition, she rose to international acclaim within a decade of her recording debut, performing over 300 concerts in the United States. While she later chose to limit her concert activity, Tipo became a revered teacher in Geneva, Bolzano, and Florence, with Martha Argerich once recommending her to Nelson Goerner as "wonderful for you." She also made a decisive contribution to the legacy of Muzio Clementi, declaring: "I want to show that he is the one who opens the door to Romanticism, which leads directly to Franz Liszt." Tipo's recordings - from her legendary Scarlatti and Bach albums to her pioneering complete Clementi sonatas and her deeply lyrical Chopin Nocturnes - remain a precious testimony to an artistry combining astonishing technique with profound human sensitivity.

COMPLETE ERATO & FONIT CETRA RECORDINGS

$90.49
CD

ERATO

Mar 20, 2026

EAO286608.2

Jamina Gerl - Piano

Tyxart

Available as CD

~~$20.99~~ $15.99

Oct 18, 2019

It was "the great meanings of the ancients" that drove Goethe to Italy and Mendelssohn to Scotland. Literati and musicians are united by a preoccupation with the past, searching for themselves in the foreign and distant. This is more than mere intellectual curiosity; to receive fresh stimuli for one's own work from the ancients is like an act of self-assurance through questioning those masters who form the canon of knowledge and to whom new voices must be gallantly added. By showing personal reverence through artistic references, artists have always created new forms of expression in the footsteps of the past. Bringing such interactions to light is the goal of this album. The collected works show examples of how pioneering this attitude is. It was Mendelssohn who was the impetus for the Bach renaissance in the mid-nineteenth century. It directly affected Clara and Robert Schumann as well as Franz Liszt, whose piano transcriptions of Bach's organ works open the recording. Like many composers, Liszt was drawn to Italy, whose cultural heritage, including Renaissance paintings and poems by Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch, captivated him. Petrarch in particular appealed to Liszt and Schumann. The latter read his poems and translated them; Liszt set them to music. Dante's "Divine Comedy" was also omnipresent. Liszt's resounding Dante reading concludes the series of selected works that push us back, as it were, into the future.

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Jamina Gerl - Piano

~~$20.99~~ $15.99
CD

Tyxart

Oct 18, 2019

TXA19135

Aho: Concertante Works for Recorder, Sax & Accordion / Lasonpallo, Saimaa Sinfonietta

BIS

Available as SACD

~~$21.99~~ $15.99

Sep 01, 2023

Concertante works featuring the recorder, tenor saxophone and accordion are few and far between. Stimulated by daring soloists, the prolific Finnish composer Kalevi Aho has composed such works, contributing in his own way to the development of an original and attractive repertoire. The Concerto for Recorder requires the soloist to play four types of recorder, from bass to sopranino. The work explores extended techniques and also does not shy away from flashbacks to the golden age of the instrument. Aho received the initial impetus for his Concerto for tenor saxophone after a concert by Esa Pietilä. Aho wrote a concerto with contrasting sections that gradually exploits the full potential of the tenor saxophone and also makes use of an oriental goblet drum (darabuka) that sometimes also takes centre stage. The origins of the Sonate Concertante for accordion and strings goes back to Aho’s first Sonata for accordion of 1984. Noting its orchestral character, soloist Janne Valkeajoki suggested making a concertante version with strings. Here, Aho sought to extend the technical possibilities of the instrument to the maximum and to write for it a work of astounding virtuosity, like Franz Liszt’s most demanding piano compositions.

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Aho: Concertante Works for Recorder, Sax & Accordion / Lasonpallo, Saimaa Sinfonietta

~~$21.99~~ $15.99
SACD

BIS

Sep 01, 2023

BIS-2646

Mayseder: Violin & Piano / Christian, Kloke

Gramola Records

Available as CD

~~$36.99~~ $27.99

Mar 22, 2024

Joseph Mayseder took part in a performance of Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “The Seven Last Words” in 1803 when he was only 14 years old. In later years, he played in numerous Viennese orchestras, including under the direction of Beethoven and Schubert, and was concertmaster of the Vienna Court Orchestra from 1830. He composed numerous violin works and chamber music at a young age, primarily for his own performance. Mayseder’s compositions were performed in thousands of concerts worldwide in the 19th century, including by artists such as Henri Vieuxtemps, Joseph Hellmesberger, Franz Liszt and Giovanni Bottesini; however, they are still considered an forgotten gems today. Vienna-based violinist Thomas Christian, who has already released recordings of the violin concerto and virtuoso works with string quartet by Joseph Mayseder, presents a cross-section of Mayseder’s works for violin and piano on this double CD with the versatile pianist Sina Kloke. The works, all world premiere recordings, range from variations on opera arias to polonaises and fantasies to duos for violin and piano. The combination of virtuosity and unmistakable Viennese charm plays a central role in the interpretation of Mayseder’s oeuvre.

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Mayseder: Violin & Piano / Christian, Kloke

~~$36.99~~ $27.99
CD

Gramola Records

Mar 22, 2024

GRAM99290

Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

Avanti Classic

Available as SACD

$21.99

Oct 02, 2015

The cover may clue you in that you're not getting a conventional recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons here, but just in case that doesn't do the job, this is, in the words of violinist Roby Lakatos (who writes his own utterly distinctive notes), "Vivaldi alla Gypsy." This involves not only a cimbalom but, in some sections, wholesale rewriting of Vivaldi's score (the central movement of "Winter" brings the biggest departure). Lakatos says that he made the album because his label wanted him to record a classical repertory work, but the links between the gypsy tradition and the classics is centuries old, and Lakatos comes from a musical family that taught Franz Liszt back in the day. Lakatos is undoubtedly an exciting and dynamic player. One might object that the logic in when he sticks to the score and when he takes it merely as a stimulus to new music-making is not entirely clear. Moreover, Lakatos frames the Four Seasons with a pair of works by Kálmán Céski, whom he calls "my brother in soul." These are intended to situate the Four Seasons in history, but they proceed from dreamy choral sounds to rock and jazz accents, and it's not clear how they're supposed to do that. The program is so eclectic that it is in danger of not hanging together, and it concludes, to boot, with a vocally overdubbed Ave Maria by Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia that Lakatos calls "a return to Paradise, a tribute to the divine." Wild as it all sounds, there's an exuberance that keeps you listening. And the basic idea of a gypsy Four Seasons is indeed perfectly reasonable. Probably not a major entry in the Vivaldi canon, but certainly of great interest for those interested in the great tradition of gypsy music. - James Manheim, AllMusic Gudie

Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

$21.99
SACD

Avanti Classic

Oct 02, 2015

Avanti10422

Bazzini: Complete Opera Transcriptions / Caraman, Trebeschi

Brilliant Classics

Available as CD

~~$28.99~~ $21.99

Dec 07, 2018

In the generation after Paganini, Antonio Bazzini (1818-1897) sustained a peerless reputation for flying fingerwork and astonishing feats of legerdemain on the violin. As both a virtuoso violinist and composer, he was a product of his time and place, working in a musical culture dominated by opera. His ‘Dance of the Goblins’ has long been a mainstay of the recital repertoire for violinists seeking to send their audiences on their way with gasps of astonishment, but his transcriptions are much more developed and extensive pieces. They rework not only some of the defining passages of 19th-century Italian opera, but many themes and arias that are now less familiar. Bazzini found in the operas of Bellini a particularly fruitful source of inspiration, writing no fewer than three separate fantasias on themes from La sonnambula through the course of his career, as well as pieces based on Norma, I puritani, La straniera, Beatrice di Tenda, Il pirata and (when he was just 16 years old) I Capuleti e i Montecchi: an astonishingly vivid and precocious piece of work, handled here with sovereign mastery by the young Romanian violinist Anca Vasile Caraman. Accompanied here by the Mantovan-born pianist Alessandro Trebeschi, Caraman is equally impressive in Bazzini’s extended, improvisatory reworkings of climactic moments in Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena by Donizetti. Having taken a cold attitude towards the young Verdi, Bazzini was later won over by the genius of La traviata, which resulted in a truly concerto-like fantasia as well as no less technically demanding fantasias on Attila and I masnadieri. In these works, as in the three fantasies on themes from Pacini’s Saffo, Bazzini emulates Franz Liszt in venturing far beyond literal fidelity to the notes, towards an expressive fidelity to the original dramas.

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Bazzini: Complete Opera Transcriptions / Caraman, Trebeschi

~~$28.99~~ $21.99
CD

Brilliant Classics

Dec 07, 2018

BRI95674

Beethoven: Complete Piano Works, Vol. 15 - Diabelli Variations / Brautigam

BIS

Available as SACD

$21.99

Feb 03, 2017

In 1819 the Viennese music publisher and composer Anton Diabelli sent a short waltz to a long list of composers. These included Schubert, Hummel, a very young Franz Liszt and, as the most prominent composer of the time, naturally Beethoven. Diabelli was proposing to compile an anthology of variations on his own waltz, one from each composer. Beethoven responded in a characteristic manner: first there was nothing, and then there was nothing … and then, in 1823, there was an entire, and monumental, set of no less than thirty-three variations. There are several possible reasons for this, one being that Beethoven felt that it was below his dignity to take part in a project of this nature. What is certain, however, is that he must have found Diabelli’s theme intriguing material to work with – and against: Beethoven often seems to poke fun at the waltz, starting already in the first variation by turning it into a pompous march. But like all truly great variation works the Diabelli Variations take in the high as well as the low, jokes as well as drama – or serenity, as in Variation 24, a Fughetta, clearly inspired by the Aria in Bach’s Goldberg Variations. As the last large-scale piano work by Beethoven, the Diabelli Variations form a fitting close to Ronald Brautigam’s traversal of the complete solo piano music. Described in International Record Review as ‘a Beethoven player whose musical discernment is a constant source of wonderment’, Brautigam has through the course of this series performed works composed between 1783 and 1825, using four different fortepianos. On the present release we hear a copy of a 4-stringed fortepiano by Conrad Graf from 1822 – similar to Beethoven’s own last instrument, which Graf supplied him with in 1826, a year before the composer’s death.

Beethoven: Complete Piano Works, Vol. 15 - Diabelli Variations / Brautigam

$21.99
SACD

BIS

Feb 03, 2017

BIS-1943

Beethoven: Sonatas & Overtures Arr String Quartet

MDG

Available as CD

$23.99

Aug 17, 2018

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 106, the “Hammerklavier Sonata,” is regarded as the most complex and demanding piece among the complex and demanding works from his late period. It was not until Franz Liszt, decades after Beethoven’s death, that a pianist was able to master this sonata’s madcap technical challenges. The version for string quartet prepared by David Plylar, a curator at the Library of Congress, was initially intended as a guide through the structural thicket of this gigantic opus. In this rendering by the Leipzig String Quartet, however, it also turns out to be an extremely revealing expansion of our musical horizons. The extended polyphonic passages quite naturally profit from the new opportunities offered by ensemble playing: the canon at the beginning of the development section in the first movement or the mighty fugue in the finale. Beethoven calls for the use of all eighty-eight piano keys, which at the time was a sensational demand. The extreme registers are also represented in the quartet version. Only a top ensemble like the Leipzig String Quartet has the magic and mastery it takes to bring its gigantic leaps, flageolet chords, and intricate harmonic relations to the concert stage. Two transcriptions by Beethoven’s contemporary enrich the program. Along with the Gewandhaus violist Peter Michael Borck, the quartet members present Beethoven’s third attempt to write an overture for his opera Leonore. At the very latest when Borck reaches for the famous offstage trumpet, the last skeptic will become a firm believer in the quintet’s symphonic qualities. The considerably trimmer final version of the Fidelio overture impressively rounds off this extraordinary project.

Beethoven: Sonatas & Overtures Arr String Quartet

$23.99
CD

MDG

Aug 17, 2018

3072072-2

Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier / Papastefanou

First Hand Records

Available as CD

~~$49.99~~ $24.98

Aug 10, 2018

One of the greatest achievements in musical composition history, The Well-Tempered Clavier of Johann Sebastian Bach is a collection of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. It seem both books, composed two decades apart, were written primarily for educative personal and private use in the home – probably to be played on the intimate clavichord. One of the most famous works written for the keyboard, The Well-Tempered Clavier is simply enjoyable music of the highest craftsmanship. Alexandra Papstefanou graduated from Athens Conservatoire, where she studied piano under Aliki Vatikioti. She followed her studies with Olga Zhukova at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, with Peter Solymos, at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and, on a scholarship from the Alexander Onassis Foundation, at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, USA, with the highly influential teacher György Sebok. She has also taken lessons from Alfred Brendel. Papastefanou was a finalist at the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland and received the Liebstoeckl and Fazioli Prizes at the International Geneva Competition, as well as the Spyros Motsenigos Prize from the Academy of Athens. She has performed all of Bach’s keyboard works and, in a series of recitals, has presented his complete Well-Tempered Clavier, Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, and The Musical Offering as well as his keyboard concertos.

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Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier / Papastefanou

~~$49.99~~ $24.98
CD

First Hand Records

Aug 10, 2018

FHR65

Scriabin: Complete Mazurkas / Eric Le Van

Music and Arts Programs of America

Available as CD

$18.99

Nov 01, 2003

The 21 Mazurkas Scriabin penned over a period of some 15 years (from 1888 to 1903) are musical treasures from one of the most remarkable tone-poets Russia ever produced. Long neglected by pianists, they were for the most part relegated to the limbo of early efforts, or often regarded as inferior ñ albeit interesting ñ imitations of Chopinís more ìauthenticî creations. Doubtlessly, the mystery and melancholy of Chopinís Mazurkas found a sympathetic echo in the hypersensitive soul of the young composer, whose affection for the Polish master began in boyhood and was indeed never to wane. Yet, in adapting the dance most indigenous to Poland and most closely associated with Chopin, Scriabin, even at the early age of 16, by his very nature, could do no less than transform it into something striking and original. It could not be helped: his vision was unique, a way of apprehending the world very much estranged from commonplace notions of reality, where angels, dark imaginings, intense nostalgia, and imitations of unseen realms were the norm. Refracted through the prism of an extraordinary sensibility, his mazurkas would become essentially mazurka-fantasies. They would take on an allure of pieces improvised in the bleakest hours of the night, where subterranean, atavistic passions unexpectedly surge forth and an eerie desolation sets in. At other times, they would beguile by sheer charm and sensuality, often self-indulgently so. The American pianist and critic John Bell Young, himself a noted exponent of Scriabinís music, wrote on hearing an advance copy of this recording: ìTerrific! He is a Scriabinist to the manor born.î Le Vanís recording of Brahmsí Sonatas no. 1 & no. 3 has been acclaimed internationally as was his release of Lisztís Complete Cello/Piano Works with cellist Guido Schiefen for Arte Nova (BMG), awarded best chamber music disc for the year 2000 in the Neue Musik Zeitung. Le Van has resided for several years in France where he is Artistic Director of the International Franz Liszt Festival.

Scriabin: Complete Mazurkas / Eric Le Van

$18.99
CD

Music and Arts Programs of America

Nov 01, 2003

MA CD-1125

Draeseke: String Quartets, Vol. 2 / Frisardi, Constanze Quartet

CPO

Available as CD

~~$18.99~~ $13.99

Oct 15, 2021

Vol. 2 once again demonstrates the unique stylistic quality of Felix Draeseke’s works for strings. When the composer turned to the quartet genre, he ventured onto compositional terrain largely regarded as the domain of composers of traditional orientation. Wagner’s influence is also found in Draeseke’s quartets, though not in the form of an imitation of Wagnerian composing but as a creative rendering of the Classical composers as they had been conveyed to Draeseke by Wagner. The idea of the “melodic thread” running through the music and unifying it is everywhere in evidence in these works. The composer’s third quartet, his op. 66, was regularly performed in Central Germany during his lifetime – for instance, in Leipzig in 1911, when the Gewandhaus Quartet included it on the program for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birth. Draeseke’s op. 66 quartet differs from all of his other works in sonata form in that it is designed in five movements, a structure reminding us both of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor op. 132 and Haydn’s early quartet divertimenti. Both spheres, the sublime tone of the “Heiliger Dankgesang” and the carefree mood of the cassations and serenades, seem to occur in continuous mutual interpenetration in this work. The “most feared contrapuntist” reveals his strictest mien, while at the same time showing that he is a subtle humorist who in particular delights in play with metrical emphases.

On Sale

Draeseke: String Quartets, Vol. 2 / Frisardi, Constanze Quartet

~~$18.99~~ $13.99
CD

CPO

Oct 15, 2021

555350-2

Beethoven: The Late Piano Sonatas

BIS

Available as SACD

~~$34.99~~ $32.99

Nov 21, 2025

Pianist and barrister Paul Wee has made recordings devoted to the virtuoso repertoire of the 19th century, earning him the highest praise from the specialist press. He also tackled Beethoven with Franz Liszt's transcription of the Heroica Symphony, a recording named "Editor's Choice" by Gramophone, which wrote: « Paul Wee proves himself a master of these treacherously demanding transcriptions, sweeping aside the technical challenges to present these great works with consummate musicianship. » It was therefore only a matter of time before he turned his attention to the pinnacle of piano literature: Beethoven's late sonatas. While Sonata Op. 101 is the least known of this select group, it nonetheless opens Beethoven's third and most prophetic creative period. It is followed by Sonata Op. 106, the "Hammerklavier", an immense work in every sense of the word which, as the author of the liner notes put it, "makes such demands., that it is as if a new set of auditory equipment was required." As for the last three sonatas, worked on at the same time and conceived as a triptych, Beethoven knew that they would constitute his three final utterances in the genre of the sonata. To quote the author of the introductory text once again, "the closing pages of Op. 111 escape earth's orbit forever, leaving the listener behind."

On Sale

Beethoven: The Late Piano Sonatas

~~$34.99~~ $32.99
SACD

BIS

Nov 21, 2025

BIS-2765

Mozart & Beethoven Transcribed - Versions by Liszt & Alkan / Paul Wee

BIS

Available as SACD

~~$21.99~~ $15.99

Oct 07, 2022

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

On Sale

Mozart & Beethoven Transcribed - Versions by Liszt & Alkan / Paul Wee

~~$21.99~~ $15.99
SACD

BIS

Oct 07, 2022

BIS-2615

Can Cakmur: Hamamatsu International Piano Competition 2018

BIS

Available as SACD

~~$21.99~~ $15.99

Apr 19, 2019

On the 3rd January 2019, only a few weeks after winning the 10th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, Can Çakmur returned to the ACT CITY Concert Hall in Hamamatsu in order to record his début release. Can’s chosen programme reflects his wide-ranging musical interests – from Haydn’s late F-minor set of variations and Schubert’s early Sonata in E flat to Sacrifice from 2017, composed by Fuyuhiko Sasaki for the competition. Also included on the album are Liszt’s transcription of the Beethoven song Adelaide, and Black Earth by Can’s compatriot, the Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say. Born in 1997, Can Çakmur (pronounced Djahn Tchakmur) studied in his native Ankara as well as in Paris, and is currently a student at the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar. He has performed widely in Turkey and has a particular interest in spreading classical music to a wider audience. But recent successes, which include a first prize at the 2017 Scottish International Piano Competition, are leading to an increasingly international career with appearances at prestigious venues such as the Salle Cortot in Paris and Usher Hall in Edinburgh, as well as an extensive tour of Japan in the spring of 2019. For the present release, Can Çakmur has chosen to perform on the same instrument that he chose to play throughout the Hamamatsu competition, a Shigeru Kawai SK-EX full concert grand.

On Sale

Can Cakmur: Hamamatsu International Piano Competition 2018

~~$21.99~~ $15.99
SACD

BIS

Apr 19, 2019

BIS-2430

Saint-Saëns: Piano Works, Paraphrases & Transcriptions, Vol. 2 / Gray

Divine Art

Available as CD

$26.99

Jan 14, 2022

Saint-Saëns excelled as a composer, conductor, pianist and organist – his composition output is enormous, reaching over 160 titles of which many are substantial – operas, ballets, symphonies – yet today much of his work remains neglected and he is known by a few works only: the Organ Symphony, Samson et Dalila, Danse Macabre and Carnival of the Animals. His original piano pieces are generally light ‘salon’ works but are nonetheless delightful and well formed. His major contribution to the piano works is the equally neglected body of transcriptions (of his own works and those of others) where he was sadly eclipsed by the more outgoing and promotion-minded Franz Liszt. This album and its companion include a number of first recordings, introducing a large body of keyboard gems to a new audience. Volume 2 is divided into two sections: transcriptions from Cantata and Oratorio and original ‘occasional pieces,’ transcriptions of two works by Luis de Milan and the Douze Transcriptions (of which there 13!) of works by J. S. Bach. Antony Gray is a London-based Australian pianist and teacher with numerous acclaimed recordings to his name on ABC and other labels including a 3-album set of Bach transcriptions and a 5-album set containing the entire piano output of Poulenc. He has premiered many new pieces written for him and has often appeared on radio in the UK and Australia.

Saint-Saëns: Piano Works, Paraphrases & Transcriptions, Vol. 2 / Gray

$26.99
CD

Divine Art

Jan 14, 2022

DDA21236

The Welte Mignon Mystery Vol. XVI / Josef Lhevinne

TACET Musikproduktion

Available as CD

$23.99

Apr 15, 2010

The commercial discography of pianist Josef Lhévinne (1874-1944) is pitifully small - a single CD’s worth and not jam-packed at that. Born in Oryol in Central Russia he studied with Vassily Safonov in Moscow, began his international career in the early 1890s, taught, returned to Moscow as a professor, and then moved on to Berlin. The pattern is unsettled but things got worse. He was interned during the First World War but was finally allowed to emigrate to America, from which base he resumed his international career and taught. In time the latter came to occupy much more of his time than performing. His wife Rosina was a fellow Gold Winner at the Moscow Conservatoire and also a formidable interpreter and teacher.

Those few precious discs are augmented by the piano rolls he made for Welte Mignon in 1906 and 1911. They have been finely reproduced by Tacet, who are one of the leading companies in this field, and whose booklets are full of important technical details as to the system’s operation, the numbers of the particular rolls, and well produced relevant photographs.

One of his warhorses was Schulz-Evler’s Arabesken über Themen des Walzers "An der schönen blauen Donau", the Blue Danube subjected to roulades of virtuosic wit. His Victor recording of May 1928 is a classic of its kind. He cuts the impressionistic shimmering introduction for the commercial 78, to fit it to a 6:59 length but for the roll he can take as much time as he likes, and he does, taking 8:20. But note that Naxos’s transfer of this same roll [8.110677] in their Welte-Mignon series comes up short at 7:48. My own view is that Tacet’s is the more accurate roll restoration, and it also doesn’t enshrine action noise as Naxos’s does. But this kind of thing illuminates only too clearly the dangers of roll reproduction and the vagaries of the system – let alone the editorial mediations that make it so conditional and provisional a method of analysing performance practice with any kind of assurance or objectivity.

Two other rolls were the subject of studio disc recordings. Schumann’s Toccata was set down in roll form in 1906, and recorded on 78 in 1935. The narrative dynamism of the disc is remarkable, the dynamics surging and cresting, the playing full of leonine command. By contrast the roll is a broken albatross; flat, unconvincing and relatively feeble. True, there is nearly thirty years between them, but the objection relates to the mechanics by which the sound is transferred or transformed (not Tacet’s responsibility, obviously). This is even truer perhaps of Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 No.10. The passionate sweep and rubato of the 1935 disc attests to a performance of committed excellence. The roll’s runs are alas mechanical, the schema of the playing rendered antiseptic.

One must be grateful that we can ‘hear’ Josef Lhévinne in repertory he didn’t set down in the studio – there is Liszt, Rubinstein, Weber and much else in these two discs – and one can enjoy speculating as to the performances he must have given. But contrasting the same pieces in both disc and roll form reinforces, yet again, how wrong it would be to take these artefacts at face value.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Tracklist:

Disc One:
1. Paul de Schlozer: Étude de Concert Es-Dur op. 1,1
2. Chopin: Étude h-Moll op. 25,10 ('Oktavenetüde')
3. Benjamin Louis Godard: En route, Scherzo B-Dur op. 107
4. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: 7 Charakterstücke op. 7 Presto F-Dur Nr. 7
5. Alexander Skrjabin: Nocturne für die linke Hand
6. Schumann: Toccata C-Dur op. 7
7. Franz Liszt: Die Loreley R591, Begleitung für Sopran
8. Gluck/Brahms: Iphigenie in Aulis Gavotte aus der Oper von Gluck
9. Anton Rubinstein: Le Bal, Polka op. 14
10. Andrei Schulz-Evier: Arabesken über Themen des Walzers 'An der schönen blauen Donau'

Disc Two:
1. Carl Czerny: Kunst der Fingerfertigkeit Oktaven-Etüde op. 740,5
2. Anton Rubinstein: Kamennoi-Ostrow op. 10,22 Rêve angèlique
3. Giovanni Sgambati: Quattro pezzi op. 18,2 Vecchio Minuetto
4. Beethoven/Saint-Saens: Die Ruinen von Athen op. 113,4 Chor der Derwische
5. Moritz Moszkowski: Menuett G-Dur op. 17,2
6. Anton Rubinstein: Barcarole c-Moll op. 104,4
7. Anton Rubinstein: Album de Peterhof op. 75,9 Prélude f-Moll
8. Chopin: Mazurka Nr. 23 D-Dur op. 33,2
9. Carl Maria von Weber: Sonate C-Dur op. 24 4. Satz Rondo 'Perpetuum mobile'
10. Chopin: Étude c-Moll op. 25,12
11. Franz Liszt: Reminiszensen de 'Robert le Diable' (Meyerbeer)

total playing time: 107:15

The Welte Mignon Mystery Vol. XVI / Josef Lhevinne

$23.99
CD

TACET Musikproduktion

Apr 15, 2010

TACET180CD

Cui: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1

Piano Classics

Available as CD

$19.99

Mar 13, 2026

First recordings of Romantic-era piano miniatures by an overlooked figure among the "New Russian School" of composers known as "The Mighty Handful." "Irretrievably forgotten," wrote musicologist Richard Taruskin of César Cui (1835-1918). Long regarded as a dilettante, Cui combined a distinguished military career-as an engineer, expert in fortifications, and Moscow professor-with prolific writing as one of Russia's most formidable music critics. He was a crucial advocate for the nationalist ideals of Glinka and Mussorgsky, even as his own music revealed a more cosmopolitan voice, steeped in the lyricism of Chopin and Schumann. In this first volume of Cui's complete piano works, pianist Marco Rapetti presents music composed between 1877 and 1888, from the Trois morceaux, Op. 8, to the Trois mouvements de valse, Op. 41. The recording includes charming sets of mazurkas and serenades, as well as two major cycles: the Suite, Op. 21-dedicated to Franz Liszt-and the Pièces caractéristiques, Op. 40, dedicated to the Count and Countess de Mercy-Argenteau, tireless champions of Cui's music in Western Europe. Rapetti, acclaimed for his rediscovery of neglected Russian piano repertoire, has previously recorded Borodin and Lyadov for Brilliant Classics. His performances, described by Fanfare magazine as showing "perfect unanimity and a verve and élan that bring out all the vividness of the orchestral works," affirm his standing as a pianist uniquely suited to illuminate Cui's lyrical, poetic world.

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Cui: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1

$19.99
CD

Piano Classics

Mar 13, 2026

PCL10211

Paganinni: 24 Capricci / Roberto Noferini

Tactus

Available as CD

~~$29.99~~ $20.99

Oct 14, 2014

Roberto Noferini performs the brilliant and alluring 24 Caprices of Paganini on an instrument and bow of Paganini's time.

"The electricity I feel when I'm dealing with the magic harmony" Paganini wrote on 15, January 1832 in a letter to his friend Luigi Guglielmo-Germi. There could be no better definition of Paganini's musical temperament. After hearing Paganini play in a concert, Franz Schubert wrote: "I have heard the voice of an angel." And Franz Liszt's comment was: "How much passion, how much suffering in those four strings." How can we imagine Paganini's art today, at such a distance in time, unless we refer to the impressions of his contemporaries, of the people who had the chance to see him, listen to him and be thrilled by his music? The search for a performance that endeavors to be as near as possible to the magic of a live concert of this great Genoese musician can only start from here. In order to attempt this feat of moving musically back two centuries, it is necessary to aquire to the wood, horsehair strings and bow technique within painstaking attention to the directions left by Paganini in his original scores (this was in fact the advice of violinist Artur Grumiaux.) To all this we add the talent of a present-day virtuoso who is less subject to the harsh law of time and can find another way of bringing back to our time the masterpieces of the past. - Tactus

Established in 1986 by Serafino Rossi, Tactus is devoted to the discovery and preservation of the enormous and still unexplored Italian classical music repertoire, from Gregorian chants to Contemporary Classics.

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Paganinni: 24 Capricci / Roberto Noferini

~~$29.99~~ $20.99
CD

Tactus

Oct 14, 2014

TC781690

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