This Fleur de Son recording features two of the 19th century's greatest piano works that share the title Fantasy and the key of C Major. By transforming inherited Classical structures and infusing the works with great emotional and imaginative force, composers Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann took the "fantasia" for piano solo to previously unprecedented heights. Critically acclaimed pianist Joel Schoenhals is Professor of Piano at Eastern Michigan University and Guest Professor of Piano at Nanchang University in Nanchang, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of China.

This recording is a magnificent synthesis of artistry and scholarship giving profound insight into the seminal influences of Bach's oeuvre. "... an increased and integrated experience of improvisation in teaching, in live performance, and in music-making for ourselves and for each other." University of Goteborg, Sweden.

Absinthe: Café Music for Flute & Piano

Michael Andriaccio

Pianist, Richard Shuster, captures “the magic that Fauré wrought into the Nocturnes across a 46 year period…stunning.”– Classical Voice of North Carolina Music is a nocturnal art, a dreamlike art. It reigns in winter at the hour when the soul is confined. – Odilon Redon (private diary, 1972) The Nocturnes spam Fauré’s youth and old age. No composer after Chopin wrote as many nocturnes as Fauré. These are complex and sometimes melancholy works. Though they embody a lifetime of work in one genre, each nocturne stands alone and commands its own emotional world.

Froberger on the 1658 De Zentis

Fleur de Son presents another stunning recording by America's foremost guitar duo playing all original music for guitar. American Record Guide praised their previous release saying, “Castellani and Andriaccio just bristle with energy and pack a powerful punch…sounding at times more Argentinean than Piazzolla's own New Tango Quintet. Exhilarating stuff."

In this world premiere recording the three-time Grammy winner composer Michael Colina does it again with a stunning new release. The LSO plays brilliantly... and this is not easy music. Colina is a real find and it is amazing that anyone's first outing into the classical world I don't care what you have done before is so assured and confidant. Highest recommendation. (re: FDS57999) Fanfare Magazine.

The Romance & Rhapsody of Max Bruch

SCHUBERT Piano Sonatas: in c, D 958; in A, D 959; in B?, D 960 • Gabriel Chodos (pn) • FLEUR DE SON 57995 (2 CDs: 126:37)


In his appealing booklet notes, Gabriel Chodos writes, “For many years it has seemed to me that these three sonatas … represent three different reactions to death and mortality. The C-Minor Sonata represents anger and terror; the A-Major Sonata is a glorious affirmation of life; and the B?-Sonata represents the final resignation and acceptance.” Chodos adds that “these performances are offered as an homage to the memory of someone close to me who recently passed away.”


I requested this release because I had been listening to these three sonatas so much lately, not because I had any idea about who Gabriel Chodos was. It turns out that his name has appeared in Fanfare several times since 1998, when Bernard Jacobson reviewed (positively, overall) an earlier recording of Schubert’s D 960 Sonata on the Centaur label. More recently, in Fanfare 28:6, Jerry Dubins called a program of Schubert’s D 894 Sonata and Brahms’s op. 76 Klavierstücke “one of the finest solo piano discs I’ve heard in some time.” I read these reviews, and others, after auditioning the present CDs, and I was comforted. One of my faults is that I can be too enthusiastic too quickly (I think it’s an admirable fault, though!), so I was pleased that I was not out in left field for liking these performances, recorded in 2008, as much as I do.


Chodos studied with Aube Tzerko, who in turn studied with Artur Schnabel. He teaches at the New England Conservatory, and chaired its piano department for 25 years. He appears to be one of those musicians who never has chased fame, although, on the basis of what I am hearing here, it has been his to acquire. I’ve recently been listening to Maurizio Pollini’s Deutsche Grammophon recordings of these three sonatas, and Chodos’s performances are every bit as good, if not better, at least in some ways.


Whether or not I buy Chodos’s premise, stated in the first paragraph of this review, I am struck by how the pianist emphasizes the differences among these three sonatas and yet, at the same time, links them with one another. Sometimes commentators speak casually of these three sonatas as a trilogy; as a performer, Chodos goes into this more deeply. With so many alternative recordings of these sonatas available to today’s listeners, it would be foolish to claim that Chodos’s recording of any one of these sonatas is “the best.” Nevertheless, if you consider these three sonatas as a single tripartite structure, Chodos now would be the first pianist to come to mind, if I were asked to make a recommendation.


Don’t be fooled by the driven, intense opening of the D 958 Sonata—that’s only part of the story for this pianist. It’s a gripping performance, and one that will be a little too dramatic for some, although Chodos’s drama is more existential than showy and external. Reviews of this pianist’s work usually mention his slow tempos, and these come to the fore, daringly so, in the D 959 and 960 sonatas. For example, the second movement of D 959 is, arguably, no Andantino. Chodos plays it like a mournful pavane and gives it a Bach-like breadth. Slow tempos dominate the last sonata; Chodos’s timing in the first movement is 23:39, and 13:21 in the second. In contrast, Pollini’s corresponding timings are 18:57 and 9:42, and Kempff’s, also on DG, are 21:10 and 9:16. Chodos’s use of silence is just as telling as his use of sound. Of the first page of D 960, he takes a long pause after the trill in the bass, as if he is not sure whether or not he is emotionally able to continue. I thought this might become affected after repeated listenings, yet this has not been the case. Chodos’s sensitivity is such that he constantly shapes and nuances the music without breaking Schubert’s lines or coming across as precious or as an interventionist. I might call this playing on a tightrope, although I don’t hear any ego in Chodos’s musicianship. Dubins compared Chodos’s Schubert to “a surreal dreamscape,” and the simile is fitting. There’s nothing run-of-the-mill about it.


No one who loves these works should pass these recordings by simply because they are not familiar with the pianist. This release serves as a reminder that we, as listeners, should never get overly caught up in the Big Name mentality. If we do, we risk missing out on great things.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

Unless you're among Ethelbert Nevin's small band of admirers, you'd be apt to pass this one over if you came across it in the CD bin. After all, except for Barber's warmhearted reminiscence of the Palm Court tunes of his childhood, this is all second- or third-tier parlor music. And even if the repertoire aroused your historical curiosity (including your curiosity about the ways in which African-American culture was absorbed by white musicians at the turn of the last century), why would you want to hear it played by a pair of Russians who couldn't possibly have absorbed the very local accent of the music? In fact, though, from Herbert's Joplinesque romp though Nevin's arch Narcissus (a once-familiar stroll that may strike a chord in your unconscious, although you're unlikely to be able to name it) to the cheerfully outdoorsy march that rounds out expatriate Bird's op. 11, nearly all of this innocent music has enough rhythmic insouciance and melodic charm to compensate for its lack of intellectual and emotional substance; and the performances are both idiomatic and tactful, glancing lightly off the music without camping it up. Production values are unexceptional: Documentation is hit and miss (we're not even told that the Barber selections constitute an abridged version of his Souvenirs); notes are brief; sound is fair. But if this CD doesn't make you smile, you're in trouble.

-- Peter J. Rabinowitz, FANFARE [7/2000]

Fleur de Son now possesses the complete solo piano sonatas of Carl Vine recorded by Caroline Hong, this album containing Carl Vine’s Second and Third Piano Sonatas. Also included is the World Premiere recording of Kendall Kennison’s “Glasovir”, and the complete Etudes of Earl Wild’s transcriptions on George Gershwin melodies. Caroline Hong has established herself as an interpreter of living composers’ piano solo music. Of her performances of the traditional repertory, she has been noted for her “lyrical, expressive, powerful, and formidable” pianism. Caroline Hong earned her D.M. from Indiana University, M.M. from the Juilliard School in New York, and a B.M. from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. She is active internationally as a recitalist, masterclass teacher, and adjudicator.

As winner of the 2016 JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition, the 2013 Guitar Foundation of America Competition and more than 20 other prestigious contests around the globe, Russian guitarist Anton Baranov has established himself as one of the leading guitarists of our day. His performances in a number of distinguished halls such as Carnegie Hall in New York, Palau de Musica in Valencia, Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg, and Hakuju Hall in Tokyo have been described by critics as “pure magic” (Cleveland Classical), and among his list of recordings, this release on Fleur de Son Classics is part of his First Prize package of the 2016 JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition.

Recital Gems from Chautauqua

New Arts Trio in Recital at Chautauqua