Internationally acclaimed Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski is known as a fervent champion of Polish music. In this album Jablonski returns to some of his dearest piano music – Chopin’s Mazurkas. For Chopin, the Mazurkas became a deeply personal, intimate statement of his feelings as an émigré Polish composer living in Paris. From some of his very first compositions to his last, it is the only form that Chopin composed regularly throughout his life. Similarly, Chopin’s Mazurkas have followed Peter Jablonski throughout his entire career as a pianist in nearly every solo recital.

REVIEW:

Peter Jablonski is no stranger to Chopin’s Mazurkas, having recorded the Opp 6, 24, 50 and 68 groups in 2008. He’s now setting down the complete Chopin Mazurkas for Ondine.

This first volume reveals an authoritative, idiomatic, and individual stylist. He’s generally an epic, large-scale player who favors a wide range of dynamics and articulations. He can be yieldingly lyrical, yet he’s not afraid to get dirt underneath his fingernails.

He playfully inflects the cross-rhythmic phrases in the central section of the B flat Op 17 No 1. While he takes his time over the A minor Op 17 No 4’s decorative tracery, his grounded tempo is fluid and flexible.

Each of Op 30 No 2’s echoed phrases has its own character and color, words that succinctly describe Jablonski’s edgy way with No 3. The tension and release of No 4’s trills wouldn’t be out of place in Scriabin. Op 33 No 2 is not especially fast yet it still conveys boisterous lilt, and with very little sustain pedal for the most part. Jablonski’s effectively understated Op 33 No 3 sets the stage for a strikingly contrasted and personalised B minor No 4. An angular, questioning take on the short and swift B major Mazurka stands out in the well-played Op 41 group.

Needless to say, I look forward to this excellently engineered and annotated release’s follow-up volume.

-- Gramophone (Jed Distler)

For the fourth instalment of his Schubert+ series, Can cakmur focuses on the genre of the impromptu, aiming to identify historical predecessors for Schubert's piano writing as well as gain an insight into the evolution of free-standing poetic keyboard compositions. Placing Franz Schubert's famous set of 4 Impromptus, D 899, at the heart of this recording, cakmur also presents two Impromptus by Jan Vaclav Vorisek, a composer who was praised by Beethoven and seems to herald Schubert. Four works by Chopin and two by Scriabin complete the programme and bear witness to composers' fondness for this free form, capable of expressing romantically a moment, a feeling or a mood. Designed to place Schubert's major piano works alongside works by other composers, Can cakmur's Schubert+ series has so far earned the highest praise: 'With Can cakmur you are returned to your first sense of wonder and revelation at discovering Schubert's genius' (International Piano), 'cakmur [is] remarkable from start to finish, with irresistible colours, refined nuances and a clear tone' (Crescendo), 'cakmur's phrasing and his use of dynamics and colours are overwhelming' (Pizzicato).

Chopin's nocturnes are widely regarded as some of the finest works for solo piano and continue to hold a prominent place in today's concert repertoire. He composed 21 of them between 1827 and 1846, and they have become a cen- tral part of the repertoire. Many of his compositions began as improvisations - musical ideas discovered at the piano and later carefully crafted into written works. There is so much more to say about it - but for me, it was partially through studying and playing it over time that I have come to understand it better. From the beginning, the goal was never to just record these nocturnes. �I wanted to learn and grow as a pianist and mostly as a musician. I wanted to understand how to shape storytelling at the instrument, to create a musical narrative through phrasing, colour, timing, and silence. And there is no better repertoire to explore that with, than with these nocturnes. - Marie Francois

Where do piano music and the noblest of all diamonds meet? Nobility, technical finesse, and the beauty of reflection can only explain a part of our fascination for diamonds - there remains a mystery, an inexplicable depth. It's the same with the musical works that pianist Johannes Obermeier has brought together in his GENUIN album "Brilliants". Schumann's radiant "Carnaval", Ravel's sparkling "Valses nobles et sentimentales", Chopin's and Godowsky's dazzling etudes, and Obermeier's own variations on a Schumann motif are mirrors and reflections of each other. This CD production is part of the Carl Bechstein Special Prize of the ARD Music Competition 2022 - one of numerous awards the young exceptional musician has earned in the past two years. A promising debut album!

The Schwetzingen Festival concerts were dedicated to Chopin in 1999 on the 150th anniversary of his death. Four pianists were invited to the event. Three of them, Lilya Zilberstein, Anatole Ugorski and Andrei Gavrilov were 'stars' of Deutsche Grammophon. The fourth was Idil Biret who had not attained 'star' status as it was only available to those with contracts with the so-called "major" record labels. But, she had been the first pianist ever to record the complete works of Chopin for solo piano and with piano and orchestra for Naxos, received a Grand Prix du Disque Frederic Chopin in Warsaw in 1995 for this and was to be decorated with one of the highest orders of Poland by President Kaczynsky in 2007. Idil Biret did something no other pianist could do. Dr. Peter Stieber wrote: "Your own Chopin evening was then the breath-taking testimony of a great artist. We all could experience together how in your hands the wonderful music of Chopin begun truly to blossom."

Sony Classical is pleased to announce a new batch of reissues from the CBS/Sony and RCA Victor/BMG back catalogs. This latest installment of the popular series showcases Mozart and Chopin along with conductor Robert Craft’s pioneering Webern recordings and the global journeys of that irrepressible musical explorer Yo-Yo Ma.

The Tunisian-born French pianist Jean-Marc Luisada, a prize-winner at the 1985 Warsaw Chopin Competition, has earned an international reputation as a distinctive Chopin interpreter. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Luisada made a series of recordings for RCA: the complete Mazurkas, Waltzes and Ballades, the B minor Sonata and a chamber arrangement of the First Concerto (joined by the Talich Quartet), among numerous other works. MusicWeb International wrote that “the most stunning aspect of his artistry is his exploratory approach to Chopin. He uses every phrase to probe into Chopin’s sound-world and psyche, also displaying a total command of the keyboard’s resources.” As ClassicsToday wrote about Luisada’s Chopin: “The pianist compels you to listen.” All his RCA Chopin recordings are now reissued in a 6-album Sony Classical box.

REVIEW:

Sony/BMG has gathered together nearly all of Jean-Marc Luisada’s RCA Chopin recordings in a budget box. The set includes Luisada’s RCA cycles of the 14 “standard” Waltzes, the Mazurkas, and the four Ballades, along with some of these works in alternate recorded versions.

Luisada’s Chopin B minor sonata flies all over the place metrically, yet his bottomless pit of local details and ravishing legato hold your attention. My comments about Luisada’s Chopin B minor sonata apply to other larger-scaled works like the aforementioned Ballades, the Scherzos Nos. 2 and 4, the Barcarolle, the F minor Fantasie, and the Polonaise-Fantasie.

Luisada’s creative juices and refined fingers thoughtfully coalesce when collaborating with the Talich Quartet and double bassist Benjamin Berlioz in the most musically satisfying chamber edition of the Concerto No. 1 in E minor I’ve heard on disc.

--ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Deeply felt new recordings of these landmarks in Romantic piano literature on a modern Steinway grand, by an Italian artist with an active interest in the lineage of piano history. On recordings for Piano Classics ranging from Beethoven to Alkan and beyond, the Italian pianist Vincenzo Maltempo has demonstrated a deeply informed understanding of Romantic piano literature, both in the nuts and bolts of it's composition and in the field of it's reception. According to a Fanfare review for album of Schumann, 'This impressive young Italian pianist displays a great love and dedication towards this music. Maltempo, who was born in 1985, begins with smouldering technique, no surprise for someone who has made a name for himself as a fearless interpreter of the briar-patch scores of Alkan. ' In his own booklet introduction to his latest recording, Maltempo explores the nature of a Chopin tradition, as handed down to us from accounts of the composer's own playing, his instructions to his students, and then the early recordings made by renowned interpreters such as Cortot and Pugno. 'What their recordings share is a relatively free or liberal interpretation of elements in the score that are now treated more rigidly. Their application of rubato is more subtle, their pedal technique does not cloud the sound but clarifies melodies and harmonies. They communicate a wide and infinitely varied dynamic range, and a diaphanous warmth of phrasing, without falling into mannerism or "sentimentality". ' These qualities, therefore, are the guiding lights to his own playing of the Nocturnes. Maltempo has chosen to record them on an 1888 Steinway piano, distinguished by the clarity of articulation which has always been a Steinway hallmark, but bestowing on these quintessential pieces of nocturnal poetry a softer and more rounded palette than we are accustomed to find on modern pianos. These recordings are, in the best possible sense, 'historically informed', without being bound either to the barline or to doctrinal notions of a 'correct' Chopin performance. They are, instead, as free and as personal, yet as imbued with the inner spirit of the score, as it seems the composer wished to find in his performers. - Any new recording of the complete Nocturnes by Frederic Chopin rouses the interest: in the field of countless existing recordings, does the pianist have something new to say? Inspired by but not imitating the great masters of the Golden Piano Age, Vincenzo Maltempo presents the Nocturnes as dramatic tone poems with a strong narrative, based on the art of rhetoric and Belcanto. As a means to the expression of his ideas, he found an 1888 Steinway grand with an exceptionally wide dynamic range and singing tone. The result is an enervating and moving journey through these eternal masterpieces! - Italian pianist Vincenzo Maltempo, one of the most interesting pianists of the young generation, made his name in his staggering recordings of unjustly forgotten romantic repertoire: Transcendental Studies by Lyapunov (Piano Classics, PCL0124) received 5 stars in several classical magazines (a. o. The French Diapason). His recording of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies received rave reviews, a Gramophone Editor's Choice: "extraordinary breadth and nobility... little short of perfection... ", "9/9, close to ideal" (Jed Distler Classicstoday. Com). His recordings of Alkan have "confirmed his place in the restricted circle of Alkan's best performers, 5 stars" (Diapason), "Exhilarating, thrillingly demonic, 5 Stars" (Andrew Clement in The Guardian).

Sonya Yoncheva has long been fascinated by George Sand. Writer, dramaturg, and literary critic, a journalist and an intellectual, the lover of Alfred de Musset and then of Frederic Chopin as well as being a friend of Franz Liszt, Pauline Viardot and Marie Dorval, and beyond her remarkable destiny as a woman blessed with the "glorious and complete independence" which in her age was reserved solely for men, Sand embodies the entire spirit, the essence even, of the 19th century. It is in the first place her boldness, approaching the intrepid, which appeals to the Bulgarian soprano. Sand showed daring for all of her life, and what a fount of inspiration her writings are, on all kinds of topics. Whether political, social, cultural, artistic, how pertinent they are, and how their vibrant, trenchant language dazzles! George Sand loved the arts unconditionally. And so this programme opens the doors to us, revealing her artistic universe and bringing her passions to life. Her house, her kitchen, her salon stir into action again, in this soiree in the company of her friends, these artists to whom she was so close and who, respectfully and with tender affection, listened to each other, conversed, laughed, and celebrated in music and poetry. Here, George Sand do not sing, nor do she play an instrument. So Sonya Yoncheva portrays her by reading some of her words. They bear witness to the sparkling, glittering nature of the "Lady of Nohant". What surprises there are throughout this recital! If the passionate urges of Alfred de Musset, fervent or, as so often, disappointed, nourish this journey equally, so the sumptuous Nuit de decembre by Ruggero Leoncavallo, the more hedonistic examples of Pauline Viardot, these two Mazurkas by Chopin transformed into melodies with Louis Pomey's slightly schoolboyish texts, or more obscurely the "medley" of Les Bohemiennes, marrying diverse motifs, of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, also delight heart and mind - a beautiful homage to the innate music that derives from folk and popular traditions, something that George Sands so frequently and tenderly extolled.

On 180gm vinyl, a new LP mastering for Zlata Chochieva’s definitive modern recording of a landmark in the Romantic virtuoso repertoire.

In March 2013, Bryce Morrison in Gramophone welcomed Zlata Chochieva’s debut on Brilliant Classics, playing Rachmaninoff (PCL0047) noting that she is ‘the possessor of a comprehensive technique who brings an inner glow to every bar. Her phrasing is indelibly Russian in its fullness and warmth, backed by a dauntless and easy command.’
Her recordings have continued to attract such praise, with this recording of the Chopin Etudes winning an Editor’s Choice award in 2015. It was claimed that one renowned pianist regarded Chochieva’s interpretation as ‘the greatest I’ve ever heard’ – backed up by Jeremy Nicholas writing in Gramophone that ‘in each of the 27 studies Chochieva comes as close to anyone to how I hear the ideal performance in my head, or as I would wish to play them had I the ability to do so… Taken as read are a superlative technique and an ideal recorded sound… One of the most consistently inspired, masterfully executed and beautiful sounding versions I can recall.’

On LP, Chochieva’s version deserves to take its place alongside classic traversals such as Pollini on DG. As with all Piano Classics LPs, the vinyl version has been mastered at the Optimal factory, renowned for its audiophile standards. The LP is packaged as a gatefold with an extensive essay on the Etudes and a full biography for Chochieva, which concludes with this endorsement from Stephen Kovacevich: ‘Zlata Chochieva is one of the most interesting and unusual pianists today. She has superb technical abilities, but it is her personal intuition in the music she play s that is special. I would be interested to hear anything she does and that is rare.’

This is recording of Ballades and Scherzos by Fryderyk Chopin. Performed and recorded by outstanding Czech pianist Martin Kasik in Dvorak Hall, Rudolfinum Prague, Czech Republic.

The final volume of this groundbreaking Thomas Jensen series encapsulates the series as a whole. New remasterings of rare studio recordings from the 1940s complement first-ever releases for live broadcasts from the 1950s and 60s. The repertoire demonstrates Jensen's excellence as a sympathetic concerto partner; an insightful interpreter of Sibelius; and a devoted advocate for the composers of his native Denmark

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.’

Franz Liszt etudes d'execution transcendante Nos. 1-12, S. 139 from: Grandes etudes de Paganini, S. 141 etude No. 3 in G-sharp minor - "La Campanella": Allegretto Frederic Chopin etude in G-flat major, op. 10 No. 5, "Black Keys" Yunjie Chen, piano Yunjie Chen's new album featuring Franz Liszt's Transcendental etudes is an exceptional addition to any classical music collection. Renowned for his interpretative depth and technical prowess, Chen brings a fresh perspective to these intricate works. From a young age, Chen has been immersed in Liszt's challenging pieces, having first encountered them at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. His deep connection with these works is evident in his performance, which balances technical precision with emotional depth. Chen sees Liszt's etudes not merely as technical exercises but as character pieces, each with it's own narrative and emotion. Yunjie Chen's approach to these pieces is both respectful of Liszt's intentions and uniquely his own. He avoids overromanticizing the music, instead aiming for a balance between rhythmic precision and expressive emotion. His nuanced interpretation brings out the vivid imagery and emotions in each etude, from the wit and sarcasm in "Feux Follets" to the heroic and tumultuous "Mazeppa." Through this recording, Chen invites listeners to experience the transcendental beauty of Liszt's music. He hopes that his performance will not only showcase the technical demands of these pieces but also their lyrical and evocative qualities, allowing listeners to appreciate the profound poetry embedded within each note.

The French pianist Ismaël Margain, newly signed up with naïve, creates a sensitive and meaningful juxtaposition of two major composers of piano repertoire, Frédéric Chopin and Gabriel Fauré. In spite of its title, this first album by the French pianist recorded under the naïve label is anything but improvised: Ismaël Margain cleverly structures the meeting between two piano geniuses, Frédéric Chopin and Gabriel Fauré, highlighting an “obvious kinship between their styles and in their inspiration,” without confusing or misrepresenting their uniqueness. The impromptu form, common to both composers – four for the first, six for the second –, is the starting point for this logical comparison, organising diversity of atmosphere around similar tonalities.

Chinese pianist Nariga Nogi, in live recordings of piano works by Haydn, Liszt, Debussy, and Chopin.

The pianist Anna Zassimova offers us a musical journey through most of Chopin’s creative periods, bringing together miniatures and some larger scaled, highly structured works. We can thus follow the composer’s stylistic evolution: slightly whimsical at first, then works that are often tragic and violent, evolving in his final years towards great luminosity and relative calm.

Highlights of this recital include the Ballades Nos 2 and 4, the Mazurkas, Op. 41 and Op. 50 and the Scherzo No. 4 in E major. The mazurkas can be seen as a kind of diary that Chopin kept throughout his life as an artist, reflecting his deep-rooted attachment to Poland. In them, folklore was entirely recreated and stylized. Considered the finest of Chopin’s creation and among the most representative of romantic music, the Ballads are pure music in its finest form. Without any specific programme, they are said to have been inspired by the poetic ideas of one of his friends, the poet Adam Mickiewicz. Finally, the Scherzo has an almost fairy-tale, luminous atmosphere, although there are more passionate and intense moments, and it thus appears close to the character of the scherzo as it was once conceived.

You have to sing with your fingers! - Frederic Chopin is said to have often demanded of his pupils during piano lessons. On which instruments could this demand be better realized than on the pianos of his time that he preferred? For this recording, the young Austrian pianist Martin Nobauer selected five historical instruments that were built between 1829 and 1853. Although there are only 24 years in between, the development in sound aesthetics from the rather thin and transparent sound of the earlier instruments to the fuller, rounder sound of the Pleyel grand piano from 1842 and especially the erard grand piano from 1853 is clearly perceptible. The works chosen for this album were composed in close temporal proximity to the creation of the instruments: the Piano Sonata in B minor op. 58, the Impromptu in G-flat major op. 51, the Mazurkas op. 50 as well as the Ballade op. 52 and the Fantaisie op. 49, both in F minor.

Sachiko Furuhata was born in Yokohama, Japan, and completed her piano studies at the Tokyo Conservatory. Further studies took her to Germany at the Detmold University of Music and the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf. Her teachers include Roberto Szidon, Detlev Kraus, Naoyuki Taneda and Willem Brons. Her concert activities have taken her to Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Japan. With this third recital album, Sachiko Furuhata takes up selected works by Frédéric Chopin. With the famous etudes, the nocturnes and waltzes, different moods are singled out and compare so that an independent Chopin portrait is drawn.

The two early concertos of Chopin are repertoire works, deservedly so, for their prodigious synthesis of virtuoso finesse and lyricism. However, the composer’s music for piano and orchestra does not stop there: he produced a quartet of standalone concertante pieces, each on the scale of his concerto first movements, which once were recorded as fill-ups to the concertos but have been neglected in recent years. The Russian pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva redresses this neglect with a beautifully polished new album of all four pieces, for which she receives warmly idiomatic support from the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of Pardubice, on an intimate scale which the composer would have recognized (and preferred).

Chopin wrote his variations of Mozart’s ‘La ci darem’ as a prodigally talented teenager, a composition exercise for his teacher back in Warsaw. While cast in the popular style of its time – a grand introduction for a popular operatic melody, elaborated with pianistic sleights of hand for maximum effect, and a rousing finale – the piece is inspired with moments of originality that elevate it above contemporary comparison pieces. The Fantasy on Polish Airs and the Krakowiak soon followed, as Chopin was becoming celebrated across Europe as a new star of that new instrument, the piano. The themes in the Krakowiak are Chopin’s own,but their character is designedly Polish – mystic in the Romantic, piano-and-horn-led introduction, then sparkling with gaiety in the main Allegro. The same kind of formal balance is developed in the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Op. 22: it opens with the kind of ethereal melody which would soon become known as inimitably characteristic of Chopin, the dreamer of the piano, preeminent master of his art in the generation after Beethoven at translating a poetic consciousness and private thoughts into the domain of music.

Pavel Gililov plays Chopin

This recording should be seen in that manner: as a beginning, a solo recording debut by Alejandro Algarra in which he confronts two colossi of the instrument. It is quite a recording milestone to tackle these two essentials. A real challenge both for him as a performer and for IBS Classical as a record label. So please do not be deceived by the apparent simplicity and unpretentiousness of the term prelude. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nor should a prelude be understood in this case as a prolegomenon to a major piece (“Preludes to what?”, as André Gide wondered in his famous Notes sur Chopin), but as individual works which, taken as a whole, represent a major technical and interpretative challenge; undoubtedly one of the all-time highs of piano literature.

Even though the arias have been 'stripped' of their text (using the historical techniques of transcription, of course, which were very fashionable at the time), they showcase Farinelli's artistry and evoke the noble sound and his open-throated messa di voce that inspired composers such as his brother Riccardo Broschi to write such charming arias as "Ombra fedele" or "Son qual nave". And the arias that Hasse and Porpora wrote for Farinelli also bring us very close to his seductive supernaturalism.

Young Steinway Artist Han Xiang David Xu is an active Chinese-Canadian concert pianist, who maintains deep interest and extra-musical possibilities in other art forms, including ballet, painting, and Taichi. As a martial art practitioner, Xu is heavily influenced, his MMus dissertation was on Taichi Principals and Piano Performance Techniques. For the past few years, Xu has studied many other styles of martial arts and even received his certificate as a professional instructor for Functional Range Conditioning. To go further with his research on the subject, Xu took another Master of Science degree from Royal College of Music. His thesis is on Experience of Fundamental Martial Arts Training for Young Concert Pianists.

After moving to Vancouver, David began studies with Ian Parker, before eventually graduating and studying at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Professor Rebecca Penneys. He continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, under the tutelage of Pascal Nemirovski, and graduated with high honors. Xu has given several recital tours across China over the past few years, with stops in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Xiamen, and Guangzhou.

His album Sonatas on Canvas received prizes in three categories in the Global Music Award: Classical Solo Piano, Album, and Emerging Artist. He is a prize winner in many competitions including the Rome International Piano Competition, International Music Competition Paris Grand Prize Virtuoso, and Canadian Music Competition. In 2019, he was invited to feature in a new Jaguar commercial for their new XFL sedan. Aside of being a concert pianist he is also an educator. In the past few years Xu has adjudicated in many major international piano competitions.

To me, this album is both a personal story and a musical narrative about one of the (piano) composers I find the most fascinating: Frederic Chopin. I chose a dozen works; twelve of his jewels that represent different stages of his life and that each hold a particular significance for me. I open up this album with the First Impromptu, the first of Chopin's works I was to learn as a young teenager. The album closes with the first piece by Chopin that I heard as a toddler: my mother often played the Waltz, opus 64 no. 1, at home on our dark brown Rippen piano. My mother, who was always so closely involved and supportive from the first time I reached up to the piano as a young girl until my last concert before her untimely death last April.

The extreme delicacy and finesse of Chopin's pianistic style was unusual in an era when star pianists such as Liszt and Anton Rubinstein were developing more virtuosic and experimental effects. It led some performers of the day to adapt Chopin's works to suit the context of their time. Goran Filipec has traced the practices of these pianists to fashion a programme of Chopin's works performed in the spirit of the 'grand style'. A digital EP featuring four bonus tracks is also available to stream and download (9.70383).