Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) was an Italian composer and pianist, widely admired for his melodic gift, refined craftsmanship, and versatility across genres. Although best known for his large output for guitar, his works for solo piano reveal a distinct and highly personal voice that bridges tradition and modernity. Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and was influenced both by his Italian heritage and by the French Impressionists, particularly Ravel and Debussy, whose colors and textures often echo in his keyboard writing. His style is influenced by Neo-Classicism, vivid, brilliant, with the occasional odd dissonance, strongly rhythmical and full of catchy melodies. He fled Anti-semitism before WWII and settled in Hollywood where he successfully composed film music for more than 200 films. Apart from his importance as a guitar composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco created a small but appealing oeuvre for piano solo. This new recording presents a selection of these evocative and tuneful works, which deserve to be played more often in the concert halls. Excellent performance by young Italian pianist Adriano Murgia. He has participated in masterclasses with internationally renowned pianists, including Aldo Ciccolini, Maurizio Baglini, Artur Pizarro, Boris Petrushansky, Boris Berman, and Roberto Prosseda, with whom he earned his Master's Degree in Piano Performance at the Venezze Conservatory in Rovigo.

Hyung-Ki Joo is a pianist, composer, and musical entertainer. Born in England in 1973 to South Korean parents, he is a remarkable musician whose artistry spans piano performance, composition, and whimsical stagecraft. A graduate of the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Manhattan School of Music, Joo has studied under notable mentors and cultivated a deep versatility in both solo and chamber music forms. Collaborative ventures lie at the heart of Joo's approach. As one half of the celebrated musical comedy duo Igudesman & Joo-alongside violinist Aleksey Igudesman-he fuses top-tier classical performance with sharp humor and theatrical flair. But Joo is more than a performer-he's a champion for music's accessibility. His compositions have been commissioned and performed by world-class orchestras and soloists, and his music is published by reputable houses like Universal Edition and Modern Works. This new album contains original piano works by Hyung-Ki Joo: Childhood (an album of 10 pieces), Chandeliers, and Funk Yeah, for piano 4-hands. This recording also contain the Joo's arrangements of Billy Joel's Fantasies and Delusions, as well as Soliloquy Op.1. Played by Sun-Hee You. Born in South-Korea, she moved to Italy, graduating with honors from the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome. She continued her studies with the legendary Lazar Berman and Valentina Berman, and refined her artistry under the guidance of Bruno Canino, Oxana Yablonskaya, Boris Petrushansky, and Paul Badura-Skoda. She recorded for Piano Classics piano works by Kapustin.

The latest volume in an ongoing series by an acclaimed Bach specialist on the modern piano. With recordings of the French Suites, Partitas and Goldberg Variations on Piano Classics, the Chinese pianist Yuan Sheng has placed himself among the most searching of present-day Bach pianists. As Jed Distler remarked in Gramophone, reviewing the Goldbergs, 'Yuan Sheng's disciplined, scrupulously terraced style often reflects his mentor Rosalyn Tureck.' In a new and illuminating booklet essay for this album, the musicologist and pianist Raymond Erickson remarks that the 15 two-part Inventions and the 15 three-part Sinfonias played an important role in Bach's teaching. These pieces, although today mainly associated with basic piano training, are not at all easy and in fact are sophisticated, small-scale masterpieces. 'They were not composed simply to provide technical training in keyboard playing but, perhaps more important, to teach keyboard players how to compose.' In 1720 Bach's oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-84) was already of an age appropriate for introducing him into the family trade of musician. So Bach started for him a music notebook: a Clavierbuchlein which included these Inventions and Sinfonias. Bach revised them shortly before moving to Leipzig in the spring of 1720, to take up his new post as Thomaskantor, and copied them out with a preface. In learning and playing these works, Bach affirmed, a diligent student would be taught 'a clear manner for playing not only in two voices but also in three obbligato parts and, furthermore, not only how to invent good musical ideas [inventiones] but also how to develop these well. And above all, how to achieve a cantabile manner of playing, and additionally to obtain a strong foretaste of Composition.' So it is that the Inventions and Sinfonias have given much pleasure to both performers and listeners throughout the subsequent two centuries. Brief as they are, each one of these 30 works elegantly outlines a distinct and often playful world of it's own. They reward intensive listening both on their own and in sequence. And Yuan Sheng's performances draw on all the coloristic possibilities and varieties of articulation available on the modern piano, without seeking to exceed the bounds of style which the works themselves inhabit.

A unique recital on record of complementary bagatelles and sonatas from two distinct periods in Beethoven's life, in a new recording by a modern master pianist. Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy is 'a storyteller', remarked Jeremy Nicholas in his Gramophone review of the Chopin sonatas on Piano Classics. He went on to praise 'nigh-on ideal' playing in the Second Sonata: 'unforced, rhythmically buoyant [and] texturally translucent'. The German pianist now illuminates four works of Beethoven with the same qualities. The Sonata Op.31 No.3 and Bagatelles Op.33 both date from what would prove to be a transitional point in Beethoven's career, around the year 1802, as he was stretching his wings and his capabilities. They achieve striking and often sudden contrasts of expression within both expansive sonata-form structures and the miniature sketch-form of the bagatelle, which Beethoven effectively invented from scratch with this set. 'Schmitt-Leonardy's superb technical and musical command holds unflagging interest' through the variation sets of Brahms, according to Jed Distler in another Gramophone review. Such command is a prerequisite for addressing the late masterpieces of Beethoven, so often recorded, and to which Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy brings his own, individual musical intelligence. Twenty years elapsed between those earlier pieces and the Sonata Op.110, during which time Beethoven's thinking inevitably underwent a sea-change. By this point he was striving ever more keenly to achieve the expression of transcendence in music, and the Sonata's ineffable opening phrase seems to distil that search into an unforgettable gesture. The Sonata is also marked by the composer's intensifying preoccupation with Baroque-era counterpoint, which gives the most haunting life to the finale's semi-autobiographical narrative of vitality lost and regained. The Bagatelles Op.126 are trifles in name only, contemporary with the Ninth Symphony, sharing the Olympian humour of it's Scherzo and the span of the Diabelli Variations. Each one captures a mood as intense as it is fleeting. They are perhaps comparable in this way with the sonatas of Scarlatti, such as those played by Schmitt-Leonardy on another Piano Classics album: 'one the most intelligently programmed and distinctively played Scarlatti collections to cross my reviewer's desk in years.' (Gramophone)

New recordings of neglected but compelling piano works from the spring of Giuseppe Martucci's career. Martucci composed all the pieces on this album during the year 1876. As Ilaria Sinicropi observes in her booklet essay, Martucci was 'a composer in the making', in the first flush of his talent. In finding his own voice for instrumental composition, he looked naturally northwards, to the other side of the Alps, and in particular to Schumann and to Brahms, with their strong narrative arcs, their expansion of traditional models such as sonata form and their richly chromatic but disciplined harmony. The more adventurous language of the Capriccio e Serenata Op.57 was yet to come. Yet the first movement of the Piano Sonata - mysteriously neglected by pianists until now, with no other recordings in the current catalogue - already shows Martucci stretching his wings, and adapting the fantasy-style of Schumann to the ends of his own lyrical style. Sinicropi hears within it a powerful evocation of nature in the mould of Grieg's Lyric Pieces, and it prefigures the imposing intensity of expression in the third-movement Andante, with a scintillating Scherzo to serve as intermezzo and a Lisztian finale which synthesizes elements of chorale, fugue and rondo. The suite of Four Pieces Op.31 do not venture into the Sonata's ambitious terrain, cast by and large in a vein of gentle introspection, but they too reward close listening (which again is only now possible with Ilaria Sinicropi's recording). In fact the opening Nocturne is the most developed piece of the quartet, belying it's title with fiery outbursts and unexpected pauses. The following barcarolle and Romance may be heard as songs without words in a stylish emulation of Mendelssohn, before a final 'Dolce Ricardo's (Sweet Memory) returns to the tripartite but eventful form of the Nocturne. Finally, the Mazurka Op.35 makes a graceful encore, 'deeply rooted in the Italian tradition and the expressive style typical of mannerism,' according to Ilaria Sinicropi. Her affinity with this music is abundantly clear from her playing as well as her writing, and with this album she makes an auspicious debut on Piano Classics, which is sure to attract wider attention.

The piano dances: new recordings of ballet classics in sparkling keyboard arrangements. Born in Russia, living and working in Germany, Ekaterina Litvintseva has made a string of critically acclaimed recordings for Piano Classics, featuring the music of Chopin, Rachmaninoff and more. On her latest album, she turns to a trio of ballet scores which have always captivated audiences for the particular genius of their marriage between story and music. She opens with Prokofiev's own arrangement of 10 pieces from Romeo and Juliet, followed by Guido Agosti's arrangement of the Suite from Stravinsky's Firebird, and Mikhail Pletnev's virtuoso transcription of dances from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. As in any popular recital, there are three encores: a waltz from Delibes' Coppelia (arranged by Erno Dohnanyi), Les Sauvages by Rameau, and finally another foot-tapping dance from the French Baroque, extracted from an opera by Lully. In these transcriptions, the pianist becomes more than just a substitute for the orchestra; she takes the role of a storyteller and a conduit for the expression of the ballet. The reduction of forces brings a more intense focus on the melodic lines, the harmonic progressions and the rhythmic subtleties of the music. Prokofiev chose to recompose and distil the essence of pivotal moments in Romeo and Juliet rather than making straightforward arrangements. In their own ways, Agosti and Pletnev also demonstrate that the essence of ballet can be captured and reimagined in the hands of a skilled pianist. While their versions of Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky have become crowd-pleasing pianistic tours de force in their own right, they also retain the elegance and the fundamental pulse of the original dances. 'The 30-something Ekaterina Litvintseva has been amassing a distinguished discography, and this... is a fine addition, exhibiting the combination of sensitivity and self-assurance that have marked her playing up until now... you owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejacevic.' (Fanfare, reviewing PCL10226)

A unique collection of both piano solo and concertante pieces by the Boulanger sisters, inspiringly brought to life by the Dutch pianist Duco Burgers. Despite her tragically early demise from tuberculosis in 1918, aged just 25, Lili Boulanger has become almost a household name in classical music during the last generation, through her slender but exquisitely crafted works for choral, orchestral and chamber forces above all, exemplified by her Psalm settings and her tone-poems such as D'un soir triste. Her music for solo piano is less well known, but still distinctive, as Duco Burgers persuasively demonstrates in these new recordings of the Prelude in D, the Trois Morceaux and the Theme and Variations. The Prelude is a work of her prodigious teenage years, while the Trois Morceaux belong to the happiest period in her short life, while she was staying at the Villa Medici in Rome, having won the prestigious Prix de Rome. The Fantaisie affords a fascinating window on to the aesthetic ambitions of the 25-year-old Nadia Boulanger as a creator in her own right, years before she became the renowned facilitator of others' creativity as a teacher of composition, theory and technique. The model of Franck's Symphonic Variations may be evident in the form and scale of the 20-minute work, dating from 1912, but Nadia presents her own, high contrasts of tragic nobility and free-flowing fantasy within the piece. Darker still is Vers une vie nouvelle, a solo piece from 1918, brooding and powerful out of all proportion to it's brevity. In his booklet essay, Duco Burgers weaves together commentary on the life and work of the sisters, entwined but distinct threads of energy, creativity and tragedy shaped by the world around them.

'Only top-flight virtuosos need apply. Emanuele Delucchi is one of them... in a class of his own' (Gramophone). This is Delucchi's fourth album dedicated to the pianistic art of Leopold Godowsky. It's theme is counterpoint, and the possibilities of polyphony at the piano, which Godowsky expanded beyond previously conceived limitations. The album opens with Godowsky's magnificent transcription of the Sonata for Solo Violin BWV1001 by Bach. Counterbalancing the Sonata, the album closes with the serene Andante from the Solo Sonata BWV1003. In 1929, Godowsky composed his own Prelude and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H as one of a series of pieces for the left hand: a formidable demonstration of technical and compositional ingenuity. 'Imagine a real fugue in three voices,' he wrote to his friends, 'inversions, contractions, pedal points and all kind of devices on B-A-C-H for one hand!' Yet the Fugue itself is far from austere but rather upbeat in mood, no less a joyful celebration of the piano and it's possibilities than the rest of the works here. Godowsky based the first of his Symphonic Metamorphoses on themes of Johann Strauss on the Kunstlerleben waltz. This piece competes with his contrapuntal paraphrase on Weber's Invitation to the Dance (dedicated to Busoni, no less) as perhaps the most complex pieces ever written for the piano on dance themes. As on his previous Godowsky albums, all of them eliciting an enthusiastic critical reception, Delucchi has chosen to record these works on a piano from Godowsky's own time, lending both warm colours and a period flavour to his playing. He has chosen a Steinway piano from 1879 with a warm and poetic sound, well fitted to evoke the mood of fin-de-siecle Vienna, and to unfold the intricate polyphony of a piano genius. Delucchi also contributes his own, succinct and informed booklet essay on the history and context of these pieces.

Konstantinos Destounis has made a speciality of Ravel’s piano works, playing them in concert on many occasions, including a two-night survey of the whole solo-piano output at the Conservatoire in Athens last November. He made this recording around the same time and captures the sense of music on the wing, still wet on the page from the pen of its fastidious creator. Born in Athens in 1991, Destounis studied in Thessaloniki and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg before taking his Master’s at the Royal College of Music in London. Springboard to his performing career has been winning many international piano competitions, most notably the Grand Prix Maria Callas in Athens, the Southern Highlands in Canberra and the Bremen European Piano Competition. On this album, his first major recording, he reveals himself to be a compelling interpreter of music which still sets a benchmark among pianists for technical finesse and musicianship. For Ravel, as for Beethoven and Stravinsky, the craft of composition was an essentially pianistic endeavour. While his image has become fixed in popular reception by masterpieces of orchestral colour such as Boléro, La valse, and Daphnis et Chloé, the composer regarded the processes of composition and orchestration as separate. He remarked to his student Vaughan Williams that ‘without a piano one cannot invent new harmonies’. Ravel paid tribute to his teacher Gabriel Fauré as ‘the origin of whatever pianistic innovation my works may be thought to contain’. All the same, the pianistic influence of Saint-Saëns makes its presence felt too, and Chabrier in the early pieces. Perhaps Ravel becomes more himself in each successive piece, from the Sérénade grotesque of 1892–93 through to Le tombeau de Couperin of 1914–17, but the process is one of refinement rather than radical transformation, taking in the darkly disturbing imagery of Gaspard de la nuit, which rapidly assumed totemic significance within the modern piano literature.

Alkan: Early Works & Juvenilia

Cascioli: 12 Etudes

Explorer Set - American Edition

Rautavaara: Complete Piano Works

Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) approached the piano with a sense of expressive freedom, avoiding the conventions of pure virtuosity and preferring a more intimate and reflective language. His piano pieces range from lyrical miniatures to more complex works, in which influences can be recognized from Italian early music to the modernity of Debussy, Casella, Stravinsky and Scriabin. Alessandro Riccardi has programmed a sequence of pieces written during the 1900s and 1910s. They evoke a creative laboratory, where harmonic experimentation and the search for new expressive forms intertwine with a deep respect for the past. From 1905, the 6 Morceaux represent the first expression of Malipiero's compositional personality, where modal influences intersect with late 19th-century trends. Published in 1910, the Tre danze antiche represent Malipiero the assiduous antiquarian, the reviver and transcriber of his 17th-century forebears such as Monteverdi and Gabrieli. The quartet of Preludi autunnali were composed in Venice in September 1914 and foreshadow a period of 'perpetual tragedy' in the composer's music caused by the outbreak of World War I. As Malipiero wrote in 1952: "Their melancholy is perhaps the effect of the war just begun and not yet felt." Those effects are further amplified in Maschere che passano from 1918, a 10-minute quintet of oblique sketches, presenting high contrasts: mysterious, violent, distant, Malipiero at his most late-Debussyan. In 1920 he then wrote a heartfelt homage to Debussy, followed by 'Three Homages', which undercut the solemnity of their title by being dedicated successively to a parrot, an elephant and 'an idiot'. Throughout the album, marking Alessandro Riccardi's debut on Piano Classics, the piano becomes an instrument for personal introspection and sonic exploration, while maintaining a strong connection to Italian tradition and, at the same time, looking into the future. - Gian Francesco Malipiero was an Italian composer whose piano works reflect his unique approach to musical expression, blending tradition and modernity. Known for rejecting the rigid structures of classical forms, Malipiero sought to evoke pure emotion and a sense of mystery in his music, often drawing on Italian folk traditions and Renaissance polyphony. His piano compositions are characterized by their lyrical qualities, rich textures, and distinctive harmonic language. - Malipiero's piano output includes several collections, each showing his innovative yet deeply Italian aesthetic. Among his notable works are the Preludi autunnali (Autumnal Preludes), a series of poetic and introspective pieces imbued with melancholic beauty. These works often feature modal harmonies and unexpected shifts in tonality, reflecting his quest to free music from the constraints of conventional Romanticism. - Other works on this new recording are the Maschere que passano, Omaggi, Six Morceaux, and 3 Danze Antiche. These pieces are deeply atmospheric, blending delicate, impressionistic passages with moments of stark drama. Malipiero's piano music often eschews virtuosic display in favor of expressive depth, demanding a nuanced and sensitive touch from the performer. - Alessandro Riccardi is one of the most remarkable young pianists of his generation. His CDs with works by Scriabin and Liszt received several 5-star reviews in the international press.

Classical Spanish sonatas in the mould of Scarlatti, infused with colour and drama by a native pianist. Born in Madrid in 1750, Manuel Blasco de Nebra died at the age of 34. He wrote around 170 keyboard works, only 30 of which survive. Some were published in his lifetime. Others are preserved in manuscript in the monasteries of Montserrat and La Encarnacion (Osuna), amounting to twenty-four sonatas and six pastorelas. The sonatas are all one- or two-movement works, quick pieces with or without a slow introduction. Pablo Piquero compares this music to innovative pop albums of our own time, 'albums that have taken a decisive step forwards, but which nobody has followed; albums with no sequels. Blasco breaks a new path in Spain, like Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Germany, but it has no continuity. He sets out as a precursor to the Sturm und Drang movement, a pre-Romantic, astonishingly original for his time.' Piquero made these recordings - the only complete survey of Blasco de Nebra's keyboard music in 2008-2010. They are reissued in a single set for the first time with the present issue, accompanied by an essay on the life and work of the composer by the scholar Roberto Montes. The pianist's efforts on behalf of Blasco de Nebra have elicited enthusiastic praise from international critics. The Melomano reviewer remarked: 'This young musician surpasses himself, not least in the bipartite form of each sonata, evoking a contrast between the meditative calm of the slow first movement and the gentle revelry of the second. Piquero caresses the piano with the same humility with which Manuel Blasco de Nebra imbued these intimate pieces, apparently ethereal in texture, fragile or delicate, yet well-constructed. He plays with intuitive and unpretentious subtlety, and conjures up, as if through a time-machine, the worlds of Mompou, Debussy, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Scarlatti, Beethoven or Clementi.' - Manuel Blasco de Nebra was a Spanish composer and virtuoso pianist whose keyboard music remains a hidden gem of the Classical era. Born in Seville, Blasco de Nebra was deeply influenced by the rich musical heritage of Spain, blending it's lyrical and expressive traditions with the emerging classical styles of the late 18th century. His surviving piano works, though limited in number, show a combination of technical brilliance, harmonic sophistication, and emotional depth. These compositions, primarily intended for harpsichord or fortepiano, consist of sonatas and pastorellas. They are characterized by elegant melodic lines, intricate ornamentation, and an innovative use of texture that foreshadowed Romantic tendencies. - Blasco de Nebra's music often features sudden dynamic contrasts, suspensions, and a poignant lyrical quality, reflecting the influence of Domenico Scarlatti and the Spanish folk tradition. The Sonatas are especially notable for their emotional range, moving seamlessly between introspection and exuberance. Meanwhile, the Pastorellas, with their pastoral character and light-hearted charm, offer a glimpse into his ability to create vivid and evocative atmospheres. - Although he passed away tragically young, Blasco de Nebra's work provides a valuable bridge between the Baroque and Classical eras, with a distinctively Spanish flavor. - Played with intense concentration, eloquence and charm by Spanish pianist Pedro Piquero. Born in Seville in 1976, he received his musical training in Spain with Esteban Sanchez and in the United States with Caio Pagano. The pianist Maria Jo�o Pires invited him in in 2002 to reside in the Belgais Center for Arts in Portugal. He has won several awards and the following has been written of him: �Piquero exceeds himself... a glorious blend of Glenn Gould and Carlos Kleiber� (Melomano); �this is a genuine recording landmark... The very highest quality� (El Pais). Pedro Piquero is also a Soto Zen Buddhist monk, disciple of the Japanese Master Gudo Wafu Nishijima.