This is an intimate look into virtuoso pianist, Rebecca Penneys's lifelong relationship to the music of Chopin - brilliant playing! Steinway Artist Rebecca Penneys is a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral soloist, educator, and adjudicator. For over six decades she has been hailed as a pianist of prodigious talent. Rebecca has played throughout the USA, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Canada. She possesses a daredevil technique, a charismatic stage presence, and a rare gift for interpretation. She is a popular guest artist, keynote speaker, and pedagogue nationally and internationally. Her current and former students include prizewinners in international competitions, and hold important teaching posts on every continent. Combining a busy concert schedule with seminars and master classes worldwide, she has taught a class of international students at Eastman School of Music for 37 years and now teaches at Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival, which had it's successful inaugural season in 2013.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

For her Chopin debut on MDG Jin Ju was awarded the highest honors from the top authorities: the jury of the Grand Prix du Disque Fr�d�ric Chopin. It is only every five years that these guardians of the Chopin legacy come together to distinguish a mere four extraordinary recordings. Now this Chinese pianist blessed with a special interpretive sense celebrates her induction into this illustrious circle with a continuation and a rarity - and invites you to join her! Chopin's third Piano Sonata, an enigmatic and gigantic work eschewing everything normally associated with a sonata forms the centerpiece e. It instead has episodes of nocturne character, extended static harmonic expanses, and ballads of fairy tale magic that Jin Ju knows how to narrate with great intensity. The many little pieces, above all the mazurkas, only seemingly form a contrast to this work. Plain and simple on the surface, these sometimes very short miniatures reveal an entire cosmos of associations. This is hardly surprising: Chopin's extant sketchbooks show with what great precision he worked on these pieces during the last years of his life. The Largo from the Cello Sonata, Chopin's last finished composition, is an interesting rarity, and Jin Ju plays it in a version for piano solo by Alfred Cortot, whose standard-setting Chopin interpretations have influenced generations of pianists and music enthusiasts. The perfectly maintained "Manfred Burki" Steinway concert grand piano and the recording technology are on the same high level as the loving selection and performance: this high-resolution, three-dimensional Super Audio album is dressed for success- let's party!

CHOPIN GREATEST HITS

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PIANO CONCERTO 4 BALLADES

PIANO WORKS

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Classical Music

Classical Music

On this new release, pianist Emmanuel Despax performs Chopin’s timeless collection of 24 Preludes, Op. 28, alongside the Berceuse in Op. 57 and Barcarolle Op. 60. Working from the latest editions as well as original facsimiles of Chopin’s scores, Despax’s brings his own passion for the works into performances that seek to remain as truthful to the composer’s intentions as possible on a modern instrument. He writes: “Chopin the composer has always fascinated me- multifaceted, complex, a man of paradoxes. His music has huge scope yet at the same time is incredibly intimate and poetic. He sometimes has a reputation for being merely a writer of sentimental salon music; I wanted to correct this through this recording, and demonstrate how timeless and relevant, indeed modern his message is…” Emmanuel Despax is establishing himself as an artist whose interpretations bring a rare sincerity and imagination to the music. He performs internationally and is regularly broadcast on many radio stations including France Musique, BBC Radio 3 and Medici TV. Recent highlights include recitals in Paris, Amsterdam, and a performance of three piano concertos at Cadogan Hall.

Classical Music

Classical Music