Biret grasps the size of Beethoven' style. The polyphony is laid out in a relaxed way with little indulgence in point making. She keeps the big line and yet is thankfully sparing in her use of fortissimos. The piano tone is sumptuous.

Idil Biret made her first piano recordings when she was only eight years old. She walked into ORTF (French Radio and Television Broadcasting) and performed works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven, and Debussy. Over the course of her career, she made over 80 recordings for albums, LP's, and television. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) will bring together, as copyrights are obtained, as many of her recordings as possible. For this volume, she performs the Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34, alongside the London String Quartet.

Idil Biret' reading of the Symphonie fantastique is, in many-respects the most remarkable thing of it's kind in the repertoire�.

The most exciting young pianist to come to Montreal in years. She has a personal magnetism that belongs only to a certain type of virtuoso performer, one who succeeds in hypnotizing you no matter how what he or she is playing.

Nearly a quarter century separates the two recordings of the Turkish pianist, who with the Paganini Etudes demonstrates what a brilliant virtuoso she was, and with the Liszt Sonata-recorded in 2010-shows that she still is.

In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF in Paris and made her first recordings. In the following decades she made over eight LPs and CDs and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. The Idil Biret Archive attempts to bring together as many of those recordings as possible.

Especially with Beethoven Idil Biret proved herself a great artist with breathtaking depth of expression and dramatic performing power... The big applause was fully deserved. KURIER "Biret grasps the size of Beethoven' style.

Biret grasps the size of Beethoven' style. The polyphony is laid out in a relaxed way with little indulgence in point making. She keeps the big line and yet is thankfully sparing in her use of fortissimos. The piano tone is sumptuous.

During the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, in 2024, IBA is releasing a commemorative limited edition on LP, Idil Biret's performance of the symphony as transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt, originally recorded for EMI and published in a box set of 6LPs with all nine symphonies in 1986. The Choral Fantasy for Piano, Orchestra and Chorus, considered a precursor to the 9th Symphony, is also included in the set.

The recordings of Prokofiev's Sonatas No. 9, 8 and 4 are derived from radio broadcasts in Germany (1964), Switzerland (1971) and Turkey (1973) and that of the Toccata from a Soviet Union radio broadcast of Biret's first Moscow recital during her sixteen concert tour of the USSR in 1960 at the age of nineteen. The recording of Piano Sonata No. 2, the second recording of Sonata No. 7, both made direct-to-disc in 1977 at the RCA Studio in New York, and the Swiss, German, Turkish and Soviet radio recordings are all unedited single takes.

From 8.501207 Idil Biret Concertos and Slow Music Edition

Idil Biret wanted to record the many waltz transcriptions of Godowsky and others. Chief among these was the transcription of the Johann Strauss' waltz Kiinstlerleben by Godowsky which she had performed at many concerts in the l 970s and the Blue Danube Waltz. However, there was another project scheduled before that; four Haydn Sonatas, some of the most beautiful among the many he composed. When Idil suddenly fell ill in 2021 both projects were abandoned. Then, miraculously a stupendous recording of her performance of Kiinstlerleben in New York in December 1975 surfaced on the internet which led to reembarking on the project in a somewhat different way. The result is this CD, a compilation of Biret's past performances of Waltzes and Dances from many composers including Bartok, Berlioz, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Ravel, Stravinsky and, of course, Leopold Godowsky - his piano transcription of the Strauss waltz Kiinstlerleben "Metamorphosis on Themes from Artist's Life"

The Pastoral thrives on Biret' strength as a colorist. This performance is also quite a tribute to the piano as an instrument. The first movement is bathed in a golden sound, with an ethereal cantilena pervading the entire Andante that follows.

Classical Music

Listening to Beethoven through Liszt' keyboard transcriptions put a afresh perspective on these familiar symphonies. Idil Biret has taken up the complete cycle and I admire her taste, technique and sound musical decision.