Claire Huangci proves herself to be a vividly expressive interpreter of Chopin, the first since Artur Rubinstein to offer a complete cycle of the Nocturnes by Frédéric Chopin. During her background research work into Chopin’s oeuvre she repeatedly came across poems by French authors such as Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo and Tristan Corbière. She began to form associations and found a poem contemporary to each of Chopin’s nocturnes. You will find the links between poetry and music in the booklet. Claire Huangci herself explains: “They may add a further dimension to your listening pleasure, so that everyone can conjure up an image of what I see as I play. I do hope that these lovely verses will act as an impetus to allow listeners’ fantasy to take flight and to create their very own Chopin diary.” This approach is proof of Claire Huangci’s artistic maturity – an approach that will open up new avenues in our appreciation of Chopin. Frédéric Chopin was a special pioneer in Claire Huangci’s eyes. The child prodigy became acquainted with his works at a very young age and grew up with them. They were decisive to her personal development and artistic career, which took off at an early stage on an international level thanks to concert performances, arts grants and a host of awards. This resulted in a virtuoso life of short-distance and long-haul flights, juggling appearances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Osaka’s Symphony Hall or the Gewandhaus in Leipzig with life at home in Philadelphia. She has played with a host of orchestras including the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony and the Moscow Radio Symphony. Accompanying her on her journey, so to speak, were not just her teachers, such as Eleanur Sokoloff, Gary Graffman and Arie Vardi, but the composer Frédéric Chopin: she owes her artistic breakthrough to his music. Time and again she has analysed, documented and profiled Chopin. Claire Huangci has brought together all of this experience and these insights on her new album, forming them into a “Chopin Diary”. The Nocturnes are the epitome of Chopin’s artistic work. They attest to the composer’s emotions on the cusp of the Romantic era and are simultaneously evidence of a restless life that hung between his artistic popularity, his dire state of health and an uncertain future. Composed in an atmosphere of domestic security, as night fell, they reflect his stimulating artistic day-to-day life. They are deemed to be perfect in form, combining all stylistically defining moods in a virtuosic form that to this day is unsurpassed. Some of the total of 21 Nocturnes form part of the standard repertoire for young pianists, yet Claire Huangci’s approach to them is a highly personal, unique one: “With her differentiated agogic approach and superior technique, Claire Huangci proved that she is now the most expressive Chopin performer of her generation", according to Gerd Kurat of the Südkurier newspaper. She rounds off the program with the Nocturne Oubliée and the Etude in C sharp minor, recorded together with cellist Tristan Cornut.

Presented as 'An Experiment in Modern Music' when it was premiered in 1924, Rhapsody in Blue made George Gershwin famous, and he soon set to work on a version for solo piano, recorded here by Claire Huangci. In her first solo disc for Alpha Classics, Claire was keen to celebrate this centenary alongside her roots in America, where she was born, studied music and made her debut as a concert artist at the age of nine. The brilliant improviser and transcriber Earl Wild (1915-2010) took Gershwin's songs (Liza, Fascinatin' Rhythm, Somebody Loves Me, I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You, Oh, Lady Be Good, The Man I Love) to form the basis of his Seven Virtuoso Etudes for solo piano. Equally virtuosic is the Op. 26 Sonata by Samuel Barber, whom Vladimir Horowitz (who premiered the work in Havana in December 1949) regarded as one of the few Americans capable of writing for the piano. The New Hampshire-born composer Amy Beach took her inspiration from the folk music of both the New World and the Balkans, while retaining her harmonic language inherited from the Romantics. Her Variations Op. 60 (1904) bear witness to these influences.

For her 10th anniversary with Berlin Classics, the US pianist Claire Huangci presents herself and her label with a weighty recording project, Schubert's late sonatas D 894, D 958, D 959, and D 960, as well as the Three Piano Pieces D 946 and a selection of songs from Schwanengesang. She accompanies the baritone Thomas E. Bauer in four of the songs and plays two in an arrangement by Franz Liszt. To be heard in a box with three albums under the title META.

META stands for the importance of Schubert's music in Claire Huangci's personal and musical life. Schubert's compositions, which she has played since her earliest youth, "show my development, that reflects unconscious emotions," as she writes in the booklet. Schubert's music is "the music I would like to take with me to a desert island...Schubert has accompanied me through all times", especially the late sonatas, which are at the center of the META box.

Beethoven in chamber music: the Septet as a chamber music original and the transcription of the Eroica Symphony for piano quartet and double bass showcases not only the palpable and explosive power of Beethoven's music, but also the flexibility and spontaneity of CHAARTS Chamber Artists.

“Mendelssohn is a challenge, because his music appears to be so deceptively easy,” says the pianist Claire Huangci, speaking about her new album. Together with violinist Marc Bouchkov she has recorded works by Mendelssohn for violin and piano: the two Violin Sonatas in F – one major, one minor – and the Double Concerto in D minor. They are accompanied in the latter work by the successful conductor Howard Griffiths and the Basel Chamber Orchestra. As Ms Huangci points out, this represents a program rich in contrasts highlighting Mendelssohn’s artistry and the versatility of such a combination of works: “A mix requiring wit and brilliance on the one hand, while also requiring the performers to go beneath the surface and reveal a deeper meaning including sorrow, compassion and nobility, and that is something that is not easy to detect at first glance. The young Felix Mendelssohn has such a feel for the dramatic.”

REVIEW:

This is the first recording I’ve heard by Marc Bouchkov, a violinist born in Montpellier in 1991. He won 1st Prize at the Queen Elizabeth Competition at Brussels and 2nd Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He is an excellent violinist with a fiery temperament and a highly polished technique. Claire Huangci studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Eleanor Sokoloff and Gary Graffman and with Arie Vardi in Hanover. She is a perfect match for Bouchkov, and the two make this music exciting.

-- American Record Guide

After a 'spellbinding' album for Alpha devoted to her American roots (Alpha1071), pianist Claire Huangci now celebrates female composers, acknowledging: 'The realities these women faced are difficult to imagine for any modern woman in the field.' Clara Wieck (who became Schumann after her marriage to Robert in 1840) was a mother of eight and the main breadwinner, constantly on tour. Fanny Hensel composed largely in private. Often publishing under her brother's name. Amy Beach's career was practically silenced during her marriage; only upon her husband's death did she return to the stage. Florence Price faced both racial and gender discrimination and later raised two children alone. Across the centuries, the voices of these women reach us thanks to musicians like Claire: 'In their music, we don't just hear history. We hear transformation. Heroines is my way of listening back-and adding my voice to theirs.'