ArkivMusic

Dora Pejacevic: Complete Symphonic Works

Audite Musikproduktion

Available as CD

$28.99

Apr 03, 2026

Dora Pejacevic regarded her Symphony as her most important work. Yet at it's premiere, one crucial detail was missing: her full name. In the programmes for the first performances in Vienna and Dresden, only "D. Pejacsevich" was listed. Why did the composer refrain from including her first name? And would the audience have reacted differently if they had known that the Symphony was written by a woman?

Brahms & Contemporaries, Vol. 3

Chandos

Available as CD

$21.99

May 08, 2026

Encounter brings together two towering works of contemporary chamber music that speak across cultures, histories, and inner worlds. Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and Peteris Vasks' String Quartet No. 6 arise from profoundly different traditions-Jewish mysticism and Baltic spirituality-yet meet in a shared search for truth, memory, and transcendence. Both works are intensely personal, rooted in lived experience and belief, and animated by music's power to give voice to what lies beyond words: longing, suffering, hope, and illumination. In this recording, these worlds do not merely coexist; they listen to, reflect, and transform one another. Performed by the Arethusa Quartet with clarinetist Chen Halevi, Encounter is also a meeting of artistic journeys. Golijov's ecstatic, ritual-like score unfolds as a spiritual ascent through dreams, prayers, and blindness-understood as deeper inner vision-while Vasks' Sixth Quartet traces a life's arc from farewell and remembrance to a final, hushed encounter with transcendence, illuminated by echoes of Beethoven. Across both works, vulnerability and intensity are balanced by stillness and song, darkness by light. What emerges is an album that feels at once intimate and universal: an affirmation of shared humanity, and a reminder of music's enduring ability to connect past and present, earth and spirit, performer and listener. = Curiosa is conceived as a personal "cabinet of curiosities" by violinist Jorge Jiménez, bringing together music that entered his life through years of travel, collaboration, and discovery. The album spans laments, dances, preludes, fugues, and songs from both renowned and anonymous sources, ranging from the Middle Ages to the Baroque and beyond. Each piece is selected for it's emotional depth, strangeness, and expressive power, forming a living repertoire shaped in rehearsals, late-night conversations, concerts, and recording sessions. Central to the project is Jiménez's fascination with unaccompanied music and historical instruments, particularly the baroque violin and vielle, whose raw and earthy sound transports the listener into earlier sound worlds. Throughout Curiosa, Jiménez weaves together personal heritage, musical memory, and imaginative storytelling. His own arrangements connect Bach, Dowland, Strozzi, Gaspar Sanz, and traditional tunes with vivid images. Joined by Joy Smith on early harps and Daniel Garay on historical percussion, and performing with his ensemble Tercia Realidad, Jiménez blends historical insight with spontaneity and improvisation. The result is an album that feels both intimate and expansive-music passed "between hands, ears, and hearts," constantly transforming while remaining deeply rooted in shared curiosity and human connection. Jorge Jiménez: "These pieces entered my life through the extraordinary musicians and ensembles I've been fortunate to work with across Europe. They form a living repertoire shaped in rehearsal rooms, late-night conversations, recording sessions, and concerts." = During the darkest of the lockdowns, I took my daughter to an open field near our home. In a time when the world felt shuttered and small, walking was our only escape from the suffocating stillness. As we reached the field, a sudden sensation washed over me-a quiet awakening. It wasn't just the spring breeze or the scent of the grass; it was a sudden reminder of what being alive meant. I felt I had been touched by Zephyr, the Greek god of the west wind, sparking a renewed wish to create and perform for the world once more. Liberte´: A piece exploring and searching for emotional freedom. Zephyr: Named after the gentle west wind, this track served as the primary source of inspiration for the entire album. Fushigi no Kuni: Translating to "Wonderland" in Japanese, this piece was inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll. A Troubadour in the Moonlight: A composition and improvisation depicting a minstrel serenading a loved one beneath the moon. For Misato: A heartfelt dedication to Misato-san, my dear friend who departed too young. The five songs above are composed by Yukari. Eurus, Suibokuga, Pandora's Box, Don't Follow the Piper, and Au crépuscule are collective improvisations. = "We can imagine some eyebrows being raised at the description of Dora Pejacevic as a contemporary of Brahms; the two composers were born more than fifty years apart, and their lives only overlapped by twelve years. Yet both works by Pejacevic are unmistakably from the same compositional lineage as that by Brahms; and both are works written early on in Pejacevic's remarkable (and, sadly, all-too-short) life. Both pieces belong clearly to the romantic tradition, displaying no hint of the more modernist directions which her later works would take. We were immediately intoxicated by the passionate sweep of Pejacevic's Piano Quartet, but also the tenderness of it's slow movement, and felt it would make the perfect bedfellow for the First Piano Quartet of Brahms, a piece to which Tom has felt particularly close since student days. Brahms's Piano Quartet is justly one of the best-loved of all chamber works, and few works are more exhilarating to perform: the first movement offers an abundance of glorious themes; the second takes us to a mysterious dreamworld; the third luxuriates in expansive lyricism; then the fiery virtuosity of the gypsy finale sends us headlong to the finish line. This album brings us to the end of our recorded journey through Brahms's three piano quartets, and it has been the greatest privilege and joy to record these works, alongside three major piano quartets by composers who deserve to be far better known. However, we are pleased to say that the series does not end here: looking beyond the piano quartets, we have further albums in preparation, pairing Brahms with his brilliant and lesser-played contemporaries." -Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Pejačević: Chamber Music / Trio RoVerde

Brilliant Classics

Available as CD

~~$16.99~~ $12.99

Feb 16, 2024

The pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva won critical praise for her solo album on Piano Classics (PCL10226) of piano music by Dora Pejačević: ‘You owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejačević if you haven’t done so already.’ (Fanfare, May 2022)

With her colleagues in Trio RoVerde, she now turns to the Croatian composer’s chamber music. The Cello Sonata dates from 1913, the same year as Pejačević wrote the first piano concerto by any Croatian composer. Like Brahms’s First Cello Sonata and Elgar’s Cello Concerto, it is cast in a moody E minor, with a yearning character are established from the outset by a long-limbed cantabile melody for the cellist. Pejačević proceeds to develop a passionate dialogue between cello and piano through an assured handling of sonata form.

The following sequence of miniatures for violin and piano evokes the world of the salon in their titles, but the Schumannesque warmth of the Romanze Op.22, from 1907, is replaced by a style at once more wistful and refined by the time of the Elegie, which she wrote in the same pivotal year (1913) as the Cello Sonata. From seven years later, the Meditation Op.51 makes no retreat into solipsism but paints a three-minute sketch of a new and uncertain world.
From 1910, the C major Piano Trio returns us to safer ground. Pejačević demonstrates a notable sensitivity in writing for a tricky combination of instruments: strong melodic writing for the string instruments counterbalances the weight of the piano part, which is in any case deftly pointed and touched by the composer’s experience as a performer. If Pejačević’s chamber music has not taken its place in the standard repertoire of late-Romanticism, it is our loss, and one that an increasing number of performances and recordings such as this one are belatedly redressing.

Pejačević: Piano Concerto, Symphony in F-Sharp / Donohoe, Oramo, BBC Symphony

Chandos

Available as SACD

~~$21.99~~ $16.99

May 06, 2022

Countess Mária Theodora (Dora) Paulina Pejačević was born in September 1885 in Budapest. Young Dora grew up with all the advantages of an aristocrat: a fairy-tale life of opulent palaces set in idyllic landscapes; privilege, comfort, leisure, and wealth. From an early age she defied convention and walked her own path, one that eventually led her to ‘despise’ the aristocracy. Her father, Count Teodor Pejačević, a lawyer, held several high posts, including that of Civil Governor of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia (1903 – 07). Her mother, Lilla Vay de Vaya, an ‘exceptionally beautiful’ Hungarian countess, was a gifted pianist and singer, and a fine amateur artist.

Her parents arranged private lessons with teachers at the Music School of the Croatian Music Institute, at Zagreb, which lead to further instruction in Dresden and Munich. Dissatisfied with the ‘limits’ of her formal studies, Pejačević pursued her own intensive course of self-instruction in composition. Having taken her music education into her own hands, she set off to enrich and broaden her intellectual horizons, travelling to cultural centres in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. During these travels, she came to know the leading artists, poets, and intellectuals of the day. The Piano Concerto was her first orchestral composition, and the first piano concerto by any Croatian composer. She composed the Symphony in F sharp minor during the first world war, whilst also working as a volunteer nurse. For its first complete performance, in 1920, she revised the work, which is here recorded in this final version.

REVIEWS:

"[The Piano Concerto] boasts attractive melodies, warmly lush orchestration and technically demanding piano writing. Peter Donohoe revels in its manifold opportunities for virtuosic display, but also brings poetry and requisite tenderness to the beautifully lyrical writing in the slow movement. The Symphony is even more impressive…Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, supported by Chandos’s customary warm engineering, clearly believe in the works and deliver an extremely compelling performance."

– BBC Music magazine (Erik Levi)

Peter Donohoe’s barn-storming style suits the piano concerto and Sakari Oramo conducts as if these were repertoire works. The recording is rich and full, in the Chandos manner, even though I was listening in ordinary two channel stereo…

– MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

The beginning of Pejačević’s first—and only—symphony emerges like a Brahmsian cortege, garlanded with grand strokes and unusually expressive melodies that wouldn’t sound out of place in [Alexander] Borodin’s musical world. But it soon picks up the strange beauty of [Richard] Strauss’s unsettling textures and harmonies, along with his predilection for the cinematic.

Croatian musicologist and Pejačević biographer Koraljka Kos characterizes her work during World War I as 'vigorous,' and borne 'perhaps out of the need to fence herself off from some of the awful reality she witnessed daily.' What she witnessed wasn’t at a remove; despite growing up in an aristocratic family, Pejačević rejected the leisure of her class in favor of work and, during the war, volunteered as a nurse in her village of Našice.

...For all of the threads of music history that come together in Pejačević’s works, their real attraction lies in [a] Caravaggio-esque chiaroscuro, written with an assertive hand but designed to evoke in the listener a sense of precariousness and dispossession. Brahms and Strauss wield power. Pejačević remonstrates it.

--Van Magazine (Olivia Giovetti)

Upheaval - Chamber Music / Fredens, Rastogi

OUR Recordings

Available as CD

$21.99

Jan 19, 2024

“UPHEAVAL” is an exceptional project in several aspects. First, it presents four compositions for cello and piano written by female composers from the first part of the 20th century, challenging the cultural norms of the day and secondly, the title “Upheaval”, also refers to the tumultuous period around the First World War.

The works featured on this recording are Henriëtta Bosmans' Sonata for Cello and Piano (1919), Dora Pejacevic's Sonata for Cello and Piano (1913), Nadia Boulanger's Trois pièces (1914), and Lili Boulanger's Nocturne (1911), were all written over an eight-year period in France, the Netherlands, and Croatia. Henriëtte Bosmans was one of Holland's greatest pianists, and a composer of great distinction as her sweeping, early Cello Sonata proves. Countess Maria Theodora Paulina (Dora) Pejacevic is rightfully considered the matriarch of Croatian composers. Her Cello Sonata, Opus 35 embodies late romanticism, with influences of Mendelssohn, Brahms and Dvorak particularly evident. The program concludes with works from two amazing sisters: Nadia (1887–1979) and Lili Boulanger (1893–1918). Both were pioneers in their fields (Lili was the First Woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome, and Nadia, for teaching about every major post war composer) and were for many years, two of the best-known women in music in the twentieth century.

The artists, the husband-and-wife cello/piano duo of Janne Fredens (cello) and Søren Rastogi (piano) approach this program with a sense of profound commitment and mission, recognizing that there performances of such unfamiliar repertoire may well serve as a benchmark for future artists. Both are active soloists and teach at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus. The chosen instrument for the recording is the Bechstein Gran Piano to match the beautiful tone of Janne's cello, and to give an impression of the periods piano sound.

This is a highly recommended recording for fans of unfamiliar chamber music, advocates for women composers and those who just love to hear glorious music played by great musicians with passion and commitment.

Pejacevic: The Complete Piano Works / Veljkovic

CPO

Available as CD

~~$36.99~~ $25.99

Mar 11, 2016

On the last volume of our edition of Dora Pejacevic's complete works, Nataša Veljkovic turns to the great Croatian composer’s music for piano. The nuanced richness in her attention to the tonal resources of the instrument, the demanding piano part, often polyphonic and exhibiting all the dimensions of orchestral sound, demonstrate Veljkovic’s self-assured and virtuosic mastery of the art of performance and Pejacevic’s perfection in her compositional craft.

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REVIEWS:

Although probably unknown even to the vast majority of musicians, Dora Pejacevic (in old documents also Pejacsevich) should, in fact, be considered a major Croatian composer, leaving behind a considerable catalogue of fifty-eight opuses (106 compositions), mostly in late-Romantic style, including songs, piano music, chamber music, and several compositions for large orchestra, arguably her best oeuvre, her Symphony in F sharp minor, being considered the first symphony in Croatian music.

The piano is the main focus of Pejacevic’s output, given that it was the medium in which she was best able to express her musical ideas and to convey the essence of her music – only four of her works, in fact, don’t include the piano. Unlike Clara Schumann, Pejacevic wasn’t a pianist as such, so didn’t appear in concerts featuring performances of her solo pieces. Despite this, her gift for keyboard composition, especially as the works from her middle and later periods suggest, does very much correspond to the performance-style of the piano virtuosity of the time. As a rule, any demanding solo part or passage is subservient to the musical idea, and not there for mere dazzle or show.

The recording, presentation and playing are all first-rate – save for a slight apparent confusion over opus numbers – and laying out the tracks in non-chronological order across the two discs works very well, and maintains the interest throughout.

It’s good to know that, even after many years in music, there’s always something fresh to discover, and the fact that this composer is from a country about which the headlines for many years have been so unwelcoming, makes this new issue even more appealing.

– MusicWeb International

Pejacevic’s piano pieces are well served by Natasha Veljkovic’s warmly sensitive playing.

– BBC Music Magazine

Veljkovic plays consistently well with imagination, an impressive variety of touch and tone and a real flair for the idiom.

– Gramophone

Pejačević: Piano Music / Litvintseva

Piano Classics

Available as CD

$20.99

Oct 22, 2021

When the Siberian-born ‘Arctic Circle Pianist’ Ekaterina Litvintseva heard “Blumenleben” (‘Life of Flowers’) for the first time, she immediately resolved to find out more about the life and music of Dora Pejačević (1885-1923). This resolution prompted her to investigate an extraordinary corpus of music, remarkable not least for its sheer diversity, which she has attempted to convey in this selection of Pejačević’s piano output. Among 57 extant works, 24 are scored for solo piano; there would surely have been many more in both categories had she not died of kidney failure on 5 March 1923, aged 37, having suffered complications in giving birth to her first child. This newly recorded recital marks Ekaterina Litvinseva’s debut on Piano Classics, and should attract the attention of pianophiles everywhere.

REVIEW:

The 30-something Ekaterina Litvintseva has been amassing a distinguished discography—and this, apparently her first recorded sojourn beyond canonical composers, is a fine addition, exhibiting the combination of sensitivity and self-assurance that have marked her playing up until now. Her tempos are flexible, but her rubato never threatens the music’s line (note, as but one example, the way she navigates the tempo shifts in the slightly off-kilter Caprice-Waltz No. 2); her balances are lucid; and her technique easily meets the needs of the music. Veljkovic, fine though she is, is relatively stolid in the bigger moments. Either way, though, unless you’re allergic to piano music of the period, you owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejačević if you haven’t done so already. Piano Classics, as usual, has clean sound and solid notes.

-- Fanfare

Piano Classics Explorer Set: Slavic Edition

Piano Classics

Available as CD

~~$48.99~~ $36.99

Sep 22, 2023

A budget-priced box of critically acclaimed piano albums exploring the rich diversity of Slavic piano music: an ideal introduction to the Romantic and post-Romantic world of Slavic pianism beyond the canon of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

The notable feature of this set dedicated to piano music by composers from Slavic nations is its sheer diversity. It would be possible to trace their writing for the keyboard back variously to Chopin and Schumann, but the same could be said of any other group of composers around Europe from the late 19th century onwards. What the set does illustrate is the rise of pianists, trained in a system that became known as the ‘Russian Piano School’, who could take on such formidably demanding scores as Lyapunov’s Transcendental Studies and Medtner’s ‘Winter Wind’ Sonata.

Pianist-composers such as Bortkeiwicz, Blumenfeld and Medtner flourished across Europe in the first decades of the last century, and so did piano manufacturers, producing ever more reliable and tonally sophisticated instruments that could cope with the rigours of these scores. A generation before them, Viteslav Novak in the Czech Republic and Dora Pejacevic in Croatia were writing less prodigiously demanding music which took its expressive cue from the tone-pictures of Schumann rather than the broader canvases of Liszt. In Ukraine, Viktor Kosenko was one of several composers here to use old church modes in his narmony, lending it both a patina of antiquity and at times an other-worldly novelty. In Romania, George Enescu pursued this path still further in finding a new world for the piano hardly less distinctive than Scriabin’s.

Back in Ukraine, the music of Ihor Shamo embodies a kind of melancholy yearning that is both a natural inheritance from Rachmaninoff and perhaps the nearest to a ‘Slavic’ expressive trait. All the performances here were recorded within the last decade and received with critical enthusiasm on their release.

This budget reissue includes all the original sleeve notes, making it a worthwhile investment for collectors and newcomers alike.

Past praise of previously released volumes included in this set:

Blumenfeld: Préludes (24) / Mark Viner

A welcome disc that adds two substantial Etudes in addition to the Preludes. Felix Blumenfeld (1863–1931), was a celebrated pianist, conductor, and teacher whose pupils included Horowitz and Barere. That is certainly worth boasting about. Of his own compositions, there is certainly plenty of craftsmanship at hand, if maybe not the ultimate in originality. Would I recommend this? Definitely.

-- American Record Guide

Pejačević: Piano Music / Ekaterina Litvintseva

Ekaterina Litvintseva’s new anthology covering about half of Dora Pejačević's piano music seriously raises her profile. Moving chronologically from her early salonesque trifles to her powerful Second Sonata, a work clearly preparing the way for an abandonment of tonality, it features exceptional playing from the supremely gifted pianist.

-- Fanfare

Novák: Pan / Tobias Borsboom

Inspired by the idea of the Greek god Pan, the work is a sprawling and ambitious one that evokes impressionist uses of tone color and Richard Strauss’s tone poems. There are lovely movements, especially in the blossoming melodies in `Mountains’. `Sea’ has some rippling melodies and lush harmonies. Borsboom offers useful liner notes to illuminate the use of thematic material in the work, especially how the `Prologue’ presents a theme and melodies that appear in the rest of the movements. It is a bit hard to hear the cyclical unity, though, and this music might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Borsboom’s playing is very capable.

-- American Record Guide

Enescu: Suite, Op. 18; Piano Sonata No. 3 / Saskia Giorgini

Saskia Giorgini’s idiomatic virtuosity is completely at one with Enescu’s sound world. By holding the first-movement of the Third Sonata's Vivace con brio ever-so-slightly back, Giorgini secures steadier rhythm throughout and conveys greater differentiation between detached and sustained passages. She keeps the long Andantino cantabile hauntingly afloat as she contours the music’s melodic, accompanimental and purely decorative elements in three-dimensional perspective. The same can be said regarding the Allegro con spirito’s conversational counterpoint and appropriately muted left-hand repeated-note ostinatos; here is where the Bösendorfer’s ‘fortepiano in the body of a concert grand’ timbre particularly speaks. In short, Giorgini has truly internalized this elusive, oddly gripping music, whetting the appetite for an eventual Enescu cycle. Recommended.

-- Gramophone

Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 / Litvintseva, Mardirossian, Czech Chamber Philharmonic Pardubice

Piano Classics

Available as CD

~~$21.99~~ $10.99

Sep 22, 2023

Ekaterina Litvintseva began playing the piano at the age of four; and studied music from 1994 to 2001 at the Children's Music School in the remote Russian town of Anadyr; on the Bering Straits. At 15; her family moved to Moscow; and she attended the State Chopin Music School. Having since moved to Europe; she has become much admired for her performances and recordings of Romantic classics by Chopin; Brahms and Rachmaninoff; though she has also explored the work of lesser-known composers from the period such as the Croatian pioneer Dora Pejacevic (PCL10226). The present release marks her second recording of the Chopin concertos; made in the Czech town of Pardubice in October 2022; and it completes her recorded survey of the composer’s works for piano and orchestra after the Piano Classics album of the lesser-known Variations on Mozart; Fantasia; Krakowiak and Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise.

Litvintseva has extensive experience of working with conductor Vahan Mardirossian: ‘We are a perfect team,’ she says. ‘For me; if you want to express your feelings in the deepest way as a pianist; you have to learn the music of Chopin. This is a unique opportunity for me; being able to re-record the concertos six years later; and I have re-thought many aspects of my interpretations. I think I have something to say in this music. It flows so naturally; and it’s written in a brilliant style shared by many other composers of Chopin’s day; but only he could also bring such poetic expression to the brilliance. My job is not to destroy the music with artificial intervention; but to let it flow through my mind and through my hands. I simply want listeners to be touched by this music.’

Iconic Ballet Music for Piano

Piano Classics

Available as CD

$21.99

Nov 28, 2025

The piano dances: new recordings of ballet classics in sparkling keyboard arrangements. Born in Russia, living and working in Germany, Ekaterina Litvintseva has made a string of critically acclaimed recordings for Piano Classics, featuring the music of Chopin, Rachmaninoff and more. On her latest album, she turns to a trio of ballet scores which have always captivated audiences for the particular genius of their marriage between story and music. She opens with Prokofiev's own arrangement of 10 pieces from Romeo and Juliet, followed by Guido Agosti's arrangement of the Suite from Stravinsky's Firebird, and Mikhail Pletnev's virtuoso transcription of dances from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. As in any popular recital, there are three encores: a waltz from Delibes' Coppelia (arranged by Erno Dohnanyi), Les Sauvages by Rameau, and finally another foot-tapping dance from the French Baroque, extracted from an opera by Lully. In these transcriptions, the pianist becomes more than just a substitute for the orchestra; she takes the role of a storyteller and a conduit for the expression of the ballet. The reduction of forces brings a more intense focus on the melodic lines, the harmonic progressions and the rhythmic subtleties of the music. Prokofiev chose to recompose and distil the essence of pivotal moments in Romeo and Juliet rather than making straightforward arrangements. In their own ways, Agosti and Pletnev also demonstrate that the essence of ballet can be captured and reimagined in the hands of a skilled pianist. While their versions of Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky have become crowd-pleasing pianistic tours de force in their own right, they also retain the elegance and the fundamental pulse of the original dances. 'The 30-something Ekaterina Litvintseva has been amassing a distinguished discography, and this... is a fine addition, exhibiting the combination of sensitivity and self-assurance that have marked her playing up until now... you owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejacevic.' (Fanfare, reviewing PCL10226)

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1; Piano Sonata No. 2; Core

Piano Classics

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $14.99

Mar 21, 2025

Back in 2015, Fanfare singled out Ekaterina Litvintseva's first solo album of Rachmaninoff, including the Moments musicaux Op.16, as an 'impressive outing. Her playing is tonally rich and extremely thoughtful.' Since then, she has assembled an impressive and critically acclaimed catalogue on Piano Classics, including most recently the great Trio elegiaque which Rachmaninoff wrote in memory of Tchaikovsky: 'an attractive and valuable disc' (Fanfare). Litvintseva now turns to a trio of uncontested masterpieces by the Russian composer, demonstrating within a single album the range of his stylistic evolution over the course of 40 years. He was still a teenager, studying at the Moscow Conservatoire, when he wrote his First Piano Concerto in 1891. On the instruction of his teachers, he took the Grieg Concerto as a model, and poured his own invention into it: a remarkably successful strategy, as it turned out, because the finished work is both strong and personal, touched with many of those fingerprints of gesture and harmony which we have come to think of as quintessentially Rachmaninoff. These include flights of lyric fantasy and equally sudden, unexpected turns towards melancholy introspection. Rachmaninoff had become an international celebrity by 1913, when he took his family to live the high life with him in Rome, at a home which Tchaikovsky had once used. In the Italian capital he began work on the imposing Second Piano Sonata, though the work had to be completed back at the family estate, Ivanovka, when his daughters came down with typhus. Rachmaninoff overhauled the Sonata in 1931, cutting and in some places simplifying it's form, and it is this version which Litvintseva plays: a stylistic bridge between mid-period and late-style in a composer whose capacity for reinvention has often been underestimated. By 1941 he was an exile living in the US and Switzerland, where he wrote his Variations on a theme of Corelli - the 'La folia' theme adopted by countless of his predecessors. Informed by decades of pianistic and creative mastery, Rachmaninoff makes the theme his own with a neoclassical severity and haunting economy of expression. Thus, taken as a whole, Ekaterina Litvintseva's new album pays a wide-ranging and personal tribute to a composer who has inspired her playing since her formation in Siberia. - Ekaterina Litvintseva is one of the most remarkable pianists of her generation. Her recordings won her enthusiastic acclaim in the international press: "a notable moment in the history of Chopin interpretation" (Fanfare); "a sense of spontaneous invention" in Mozart's K.271 (Gramophone) and "an expressive depth" in Brahms's 1st Piano Concerto (BBC Music Magazine). She previously recorded for Piano Classics an album with piano works by Dora Pejacevic (PCL10226), as well as the Works for Piano and Orchestra by Chopin (PCL10142 and 10274), which was a CD Of The Week at Classic FM. - In this new release Litvintseva displays her innate feeling for the idiom in works by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): the youthfully exuberant First Piano Concerto, the monumental Second Piano Sonata and the innovative Corelli variations Op. 42, cornerstones of the piano repertoire nowadays, and played with vigour, drama and a deep sense of poetry. The concerto is accompanied by the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, conducted by Vahan Mardirossian.

Encounter

Challenge Classics

Available as CD

$16.99

May 15, 2026

Encounter brings together two towering works of contemporary chamber music that speak across cultures, histories, and inner worlds. Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and Peteris Vasks' String Quartet No. 6 arise from profoundly different traditions-Jewish mysticism and Baltic spirituality-yet meet in a shared search for truth, memory, and transcendence. Both works are intensely personal, rooted in lived experience and belief, and animated by music's power to give voice to what lies beyond words: longing, suffering, hope, and illumination. In this recording, these worlds do not merely coexist; they listen to, reflect, and transform one another. Performed by the Arethusa Quartet with clarinetist Chen Halevi, Encounter is also a meeting of artistic journeys. Golijov's ecstatic, ritual-like score unfolds as a spiritual ascent through dreams, prayers, and blindness-understood as deeper inner vision-while Vasks' Sixth Quartet traces a life's arc from farewell and remembrance to a final, hushed encounter with transcendence, illuminated by echoes of Beethoven. Across both works, vulnerability and intensity are balanced by stillness and song, darkness by light. What emerges is an album that feels at once intimate and universal: an affirmation of shared humanity, and a reminder of music's enduring ability to connect past and present, earth and spirit, performer and listener. = Curiosa is conceived as a personal "cabinet of curiosities" by violinist Jorge Jiménez, bringing together music that entered his life through years of travel, collaboration, and discovery. The album spans laments, dances, preludes, fugues, and songs from both renowned and anonymous sources, ranging from the Middle Ages to the Baroque and beyond. Each piece is selected for it's emotional depth, strangeness, and expressive power, forming a living repertoire shaped in rehearsals, late-night conversations, concerts, and recording sessions. Central to the project is Jiménez's fascination with unaccompanied music and historical instruments, particularly the baroque violin and vielle, whose raw and earthy sound transports the listener into earlier sound worlds. Throughout Curiosa, Jiménez weaves together personal heritage, musical memory, and imaginative storytelling. His own arrangements connect Bach, Dowland, Strozzi, Gaspar Sanz, and traditional tunes with vivid images. Joined by Joy Smith on early harps and Daniel Garay on historical percussion, and performing with his ensemble Tercia Realidad, Jiménez blends historical insight with spontaneity and improvisation. The result is an album that feels both intimate and expansive-music passed "between hands, ears, and hearts," constantly transforming while remaining deeply rooted in shared curiosity and human connection. Jorge Jiménez: "These pieces entered my life through the extraordinary musicians and ensembles I've been fortunate to work with across Europe. They form a living repertoire shaped in rehearsal rooms, late-night conversations, recording sessions, and concerts." = During the darkest of the lockdowns, I took my daughter to an open field near our home. In a time when the world felt shuttered and small, walking was our only escape from the suffocating stillness. As we reached the field, a sudden sensation washed over me-a quiet awakening. It wasn't just the spring breeze or the scent of the grass; it was a sudden reminder of what being alive meant. I felt I had been touched by Zephyr, the Greek god of the west wind, sparking a renewed wish to create and perform for the world once more. Liberte´: A piece exploring and searching for emotional freedom. Zephyr: Named after the gentle west wind, this track served as the primary source of inspiration for the entire album. Fushigi no Kuni: Translating to "Wonderland" in Japanese, this piece was inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll. A Troubadour in the Moonlight: A composition and improvisation depicting a minstrel serenading a loved one beneath the moon. For Misato: A heartfelt dedication to Misato-san, my dear friend who departed too young. The five songs above are composed by Yukari. Eurus, Suibokuga, Pandora's Box, Don't Follow the Piper, and Au crépuscule are collective improvisations. = "We can imagine some eyebrows being raised at the description of Dora Pejacevic as a contemporary of Brahms; the two composers were born more than fifty years apart, and their lives only overlapped by twelve years. Yet both works by Pejacevic are unmistakably from the same compositional lineage as that by Brahms; and both are works written early on in Pejacevic's remarkable (and, sadly, all-too-short) life. Both pieces belong clearly to the romantic tradition, displaying no hint of the more modernist directions which her later works would take. We were immediately intoxicated by the passionate sweep of Pejacevic's Piano Quartet, but also the tenderness of it's slow movement, and felt it would make the perfect bedfellow for the First Piano Quartet of Brahms, a piece to which Tom has felt particularly close since student days. Brahms's Piano Quartet is justly one of the best-loved of all chamber works, and few works are more exhilarating to perform: the first movement offers an abundance of glorious themes; the second takes us to a mysterious dreamworld; the third luxuriates in expansive lyricism; then the fiery virtuosity of the gypsy finale sends us headlong to the finish line. This album brings us to the end of our recorded journey through Brahms's three piano quartets, and it has been the greatest privilege and joy to record these works, alongside three major piano quartets by composers who deserve to be far better known. However, we are pleased to say that the series does not end here: looking beyond the piano quartets, we have further albums in preparation, pairing Brahms with his brilliant and lesser-played contemporaries." -Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Pejacevic: Symphony, Op. 41; Phantasie Concertante / Rasilainen, Banfield, Rheinland-pfalz State Philharmonic

CPO

Available as CD

$18.99

May 31, 2011

PEJA?EVI? Symphony in f?. Phantasie Concertante for Piano and Orchestra • Ari Rasilainen, cond; Volker Banfield (pn); Rheinland-Pfalz St PO • CPO 777418 (62:42)

Cpo, a label noted for ferreting out obscure repertoire, has outdone itself this time by digging up not just another female composer—that alone wouldn’t be so rare—but a Croatian one to boot. Heretofore, I don’t think I could have named a single Croatian composer of any gender, but now I can. Short-lived Dora Peja?evi? (1885–1923) was actually born in Budapest, the daughter of a Croatian father and a Hungarian mother, the Countess Lilla Vay de Vaya, an accomplished pianist and Dora’s first teacher. On her father’s side, Dora was descended from a distinguished noble family in Slavonia, the eastern region of Croatia. In composition, she was largely self-taught, but she did receive some private instruction in Zagreb, Dresden, and Munich. She died at 38 following complications of childbirth.

During her short life, she produced 58 documented works. That number isn’t particularly noteworthy compared to other composers who died even younger and wrote much more, but what is worth mentioning is that like another female composer, the French Louise Farrenc (1804–75), Peja?evi? competed with the boys in the arena of large symphonic, concerted orchestral, and chamber works. In addition to the symphony and concert fantasy on this disc, known and/or published works include a piano concerto, sonatas for piano, violin, and cello, and a piano quintet. During her life, her music was not entirely unknown in the music capitals of Europe; it was heard in Vienna, Munich, Budapest, and Prague.

The works Peja?evi? left behind, to the extent they were acknowledged at all, must have seemed hopelessly outdated by a musical intelligentsia preoccupied with the latest compositional novelties. It’s not just that she embraced a musical vocabulary practically indistinguishable from any number of late 19th-century Romantic composers, but by the time she came to begin her F?-Minor Symphony in 1916, completing it a year later, the era of the big Romantic symphony was on life support, or at least on recuperative leave. Mahler had pretty much seen to that a decade earlier. Last-stand efforts by Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Franz Schmidt, and a number of others didn’t change the fact that the symphony, as inherited from the 19th century, was about to take on new forms and modes of expression in the 20th.

Peja?evi?’s symphony, like Rachmaninoff’s Second, may have been written in the 20th century, but it belongs to the 19th. It’s your standard-issue four-movement effusively romantic affair—a rich tapestry spun from strands of long-breathed chromatically enhanced melody, luxuriant harmony, and opulent orchestration. It doesn’t seem to be much influenced by the Mahler-Zemlinsky-Schoenberg axis, though perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise considering the very complex cultural cross-pollination of Croatia’s history by Hungarian, Italian, and even Russian influences. In fact, isolated passages throughout Peja?evi?’s symphony remind me a bit of Glazunov. But there are so many other crosscurrents going on in the score, not least of which is a passage at 7:54 in the first movement that sounds like it escaped from Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice . But it quickly morphs into something that sounds like it was lifted from Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony.

If there’s any surprise at all in Peja?evi?’s piece it’s how upbeat and optimistic it sounds for a work ostensibly in a minor key. Her melodies have an almost Italianate character to them in their lithe and graceful manner, and if the title and notes didn’t identify the piece as being in minor, I’d bet the farm it was in major.

The piano Phantasie Concertante came two years after completion of the symphony. In a single movement lasting almost 15 minutes, the piece is a virtuoso vehicle that alternates between Gershwin-like bluesy harmonies and jazzy rhythms on the one hand and keyboard figuration right out of Rachmaninoff on the other. Just listen to the broad, lush melody beginning in the cellos at 6:12 and the florid passagework in the piano weaving around and entwining with it. It could have come from the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto. I hope someone from Hyperion is reading this, because Peja?evi?’s Phantasie and probably her piano concerto as well are ideal candidates for the next volume of the Romantic Piano Concerto series.

When you hear this piece you will wonder how Peja?evi? could have been forgotten. If the climax to the lengthy aforementioned passage doesn’t sweep you away, I can’t think of much else that will. The fact that Peja?evi? could develop, build, and sustain a musical paragraph of such length is evidence in itself that the woman could write circles around many of her peers, male or female.

Pianist Volker Banfield is stunning, as are conductor Ari Rasilainen and his Rheinland-Pfalz State Philharmonic forces. Cpo has done it again. I thought I’d already settled on my annual Want List selections, but this dark horse entry is just going to have to push another pick aside. Urgently recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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