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.

Reviewing previous issues of Schumann's piano music played by Constantino Catena, critics in Fanfare have noted the Italian pianist's affinity for the composer's unique sound world, it's peculiar subtleties and idiosyncrasies. 'Catena's playing is a precise balance of fluidity and markedness' (Davidsbundlertanze); 'he plays with wonderful tone and fine sensibility' (Fantaisie). For this new recording, made on a Yamaha CFX instrument in May 2024, he turns to a pair of cycles comparatively neglected within Schumann's pianistic output. While his fellow Italian Dino Ciani made a famous recording of the Novelettes Op.21 back in the 60s, the sequence of eight works has never attracted the attention of works like the Fantaisie or Kreisleriana, yet they embody the composer's inspiration in full spate. Schumann wrote to Clara early in 1838: 'In the last three weeks I have composed an extraordinary amount of music: hilarious things, Egmont stories, family scenes with fathers, a wedding.' True to their title, each Novellette tells a story in miniature, abundant in the poetic division between the heroic Florestan and dreamy Eusebius by which Schumann crystallised his own creative temperament. They also make a satisfyingly progressive sequence which culminates in the longest and most complex work in the cycle, alternately dancing and surging towards a grand apotheosis. By complement, the quartet of Nachtstucke Op.23 is a more introspective cycle, marked by a spirit of obsession which finds expression in piano writing of greater severity, less floridity and exuberance. The cycle was probably conceived in the wake of his brother Eduard's death; No.1 describes a cortege passing and receding from view. On Brilliant Classics, Catena has made premiere recordings of the piano music by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, rediscovered at the Staatsbibliothek in Munich and edited by him, for Edizioni Curci, as well as all the chamber music with piano by the same composer. Also for Brilliant Classics, he recorded Franco Margola's Double Concerto for violin, piano and orchestra. 'Catena's technical facility is astounding. The overall range of dynamics, colour and expression is excellent, and you can hear that he is always in control of the direction of the piece. He is a formidable artist' (Philip Borg-Wheeler, Fanfare). - The Novelletten, Op.21, composed by Robert Schumann in 1838, is a set of eight character pieces for solo piano. Schumann (1810-1856) told his friend and teacher Heinrich Dorn that this music could only be understood with reference to the figure of Clara Wieck, and to the battles he fought on behalf of their love for each other. These works reflect Schumann's literary and imaginative tendencies, as the title suggests "little novellas" or short stories, aligning music with the narrative qualities of literature. Written during a highly creative period in his life, these pieces are imbued with contrasting moods and themes, often shifting between passionate, lyrical, and whimsical styles. - Each piece in the set has it's own distinct character while sharing thematic connections. The Novelletten showcase Schumann's mastery of piano writing, featuring intricate textures, rhythmic vitality, and expressive melodies. There is an interplay of contrasting sections within each piece, often marked by sudden changes in tempo and dynamics, which mirrors Schumann's fascination with duality and juxtaposition, possibly inspired by his alter egos Florestan and Eusebius - representing his fiery and introspective sides. - Also included in the recording are the Nachtstucke Op.23, which Schumann composed in March 1839. They are based on literary works by E.T.A. Hoffmann. - Costantino Catena studied piano under the guidance of Luigi D'Ascoli and then went on to specialize with Konstantin Bogino, Boris Bechterev, Bruno Mezzena and Aldo Ciccolini. Currently a piano teacher at the Salerno Conservatory of Music, he also holds degrees in Philosophy and Psychology. Praise for his previous CDs: 'A pianist in whom the art of singing on the keyboard shines above all with phrasing inventions that demonstrate his exquisite musical intelligence' (Carlo Vitali, Amadeus), 'Catena's technical facility is astounding. The overall range of dynamics, color and expression is excellent, and you can hear that he is always in control of the direction of the piece. He is a formidable artist' (Philip Borg-Wheeler, Fanfare Magazine).

A detailed portrait of a 'one-work composer': nocturnes, studies and miniatures by Giovanni Sgambati, as well as the famous Melodie de Gluck which has linked his name with many of the world's most illustrious pianists. When Richard Wagner visited Rome in 1876, he was so impressed by Sgambati's two piano quintets that he introduced him to Ludwig Strecker - head of Schott in Mainz - and invited the publisher to bring Sgambati �to the attention of the wider musical world, since in Rome 'he is not in the right place'. Although he was highly regarded by the likes of Wagner and Liszt, Sgambati was almost totally forgotten after his death in 1914. The Piano Classics label has played a leading part in the composer's renaissance, with an ongoing survey on record of the composer's complete piano music. 'I am a pianist and a music populariser,' says Cecilia Faccini. 'I have always seen music as the best form of language through which I can express myself. When I play I try to establish a deep and intimate communication with the listener.' She has applied herself to reviving Sgambati as both a scholar and a performer, and on this new album she makes a personal selection which is designed to reflect various aspects of the composer, as a teacher, an arranger, and an original tone-poet. Inevitably, the album opens with the Melodie de Gluck which transcribes the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orfeo ed Euridice for the 19th-century keyboard. In her booklet essay, Facchini remarks that the Nocturnes are among 'the most interesting of Sgambati's compositions. Composed between 1873 and 1897, these pieces require a refined use of the touch and pedalling to create contrasting musical atmospheres. The heritage of Liszt's pianism and style of composition seems to be evident even on first listening.' She also includes a set of Concert Etudes Op.10 to illustrate Sgambati's importance as a composer-pedagogue, whose didactic works were reprinted in many significant 'piano methods'. A violinist who played Beethoven with Sgambati remarked that 'his piano technique was impeccable, clear and pure even in the most difficult passages. His sound was smooth and harmonious, his use of pedals as accurate as ever. Gifted with a touch of great beauty, his fingers could sing on the keyboard.' In this regard, Cecilia Facchini is a worthy successor and advocate for Sgambati in the 21st century. - Born in Rome, to an Italian father and an English mother, Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914), received his early education at Trevi, in Umbria. In his early twenties he met Franz Liszt in Rome, where the great composer resided for a period each year from 1861. The young man immediately became his favorite pupil, a faithful interpreter of his compositions and a precious collaborator for the mission that warmed both their hearts: to spread classical music in the Roman society of the time. Liszt's Roman school was based in Sgambati's home, where the master trained the best pianists of the time. Sgambati was the first to conduct his Dante Symphony. Liszt took him with him on his travels and introduced him to Richard Wagner, who deeply admired his compositions. His fame grew rapidly, leading him to give concerts all over Europe and in Russia. He received invitations and signs of esteem from the most important musicians of his time: in addition to Liszt and Wagner, he was friends with Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Massenet and Busoni. - Sgambati's piano music consists of a wide variety of shorter pieces. This new recording presents his 6 Nocturnes, 2 Etudes de concert and a set of Morceaux, works with a solid and well-defined structure, innovative ideas and interesting harmonic choices, showing mastery of the musical discourse and a unique expressiveness, all concentrated in a few minutes. - Cecilia Facchini graduated in piano at the Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali in Ravenna under the guidance of Alessandra Ammara and continued her studies at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, where she obtained a Master in Music Performance in Anna Kravtchenko's class. She followed master courses with Roberto Prosseda, Paul Badura- Skoda, Boris Berman, Claudio Martinez-Mehner, Lilya Zilberstein, Jeffrey Swann and, for chamber music, with the Parma Trio.

Back in 2015, Fanfare singled out Ekaterina Litvintseva's first solo album of Rachmaninoff, including the Moments musicaux Op.16, as an 'impressive outing. Her playing is tonally rich and extremely thoughtful.' Since then, she has assembled an impressive and critically acclaimed catalogue on Piano Classics, including most recently the great Trio elegiaque which Rachmaninoff wrote in memory of Tchaikovsky: 'an attractive and valuable disc' (Fanfare). Litvintseva now turns to a trio of uncontested masterpieces by the Russian composer, demonstrating within a single album the range of his stylistic evolution over the course of 40 years. He was still a teenager, studying at the Moscow Conservatoire, when he wrote his First Piano Concerto in 1891. On the instruction of his teachers, he took the Grieg Concerto as a model, and poured his own invention into it: a remarkably successful strategy, as it turned out, because the finished work is both strong and personal, touched with many of those fingerprints of gesture and harmony which we have come to think of as quintessentially Rachmaninoff. These include flights of lyric fantasy and equally sudden, unexpected turns towards melancholy introspection. Rachmaninoff had become an international celebrity by 1913, when he took his family to live the high life with him in Rome, at a home which Tchaikovsky had once used. In the Italian capital he began work on the imposing Second Piano Sonata, though the work had to be completed back at the family estate, Ivanovka, when his daughters came down with typhus. Rachmaninoff overhauled the Sonata in 1931, cutting and in some places simplifying it's form, and it is this version which Litvintseva plays: a stylistic bridge between mid-period and late-style in a composer whose capacity for reinvention has often been underestimated. By 1941 he was an exile living in the US and Switzerland, where he wrote his Variations on a theme of Corelli - the 'La folia' theme adopted by countless of his predecessors. Informed by decades of pianistic and creative mastery, Rachmaninoff makes the theme his own with a neoclassical severity and haunting economy of expression. Thus, taken as a whole, Ekaterina Litvintseva's new album pays a wide-ranging and personal tribute to a composer who has inspired her playing since her formation in Siberia. - Ekaterina Litvintseva is one of the most remarkable pianists of her generation. Her recordings won her enthusiastic acclaim in the international press: "a notable moment in the history of Chopin interpretation" (Fanfare); "a sense of spontaneous invention" in Mozart's K.271 (Gramophone) and "an expressive depth" in Brahms's 1st Piano Concerto (BBC Music Magazine). She previously recorded for Piano Classics an album with piano works by Dora Pejacevic (PCL10226), as well as the Works for Piano and Orchestra by Chopin (PCL10142 and 10274), which was a CD Of The Week at Classic FM. - In this new release Litvintseva displays her innate feeling for the idiom in works by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): the youthfully exuberant First Piano Concerto, the monumental Second Piano Sonata and the innovative Corelli variations Op. 42, cornerstones of the piano repertoire nowadays, and played with vigour, drama and a deep sense of poetry. The concerto is accompanied by the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, conducted by Vahan Mardirossian.

Beyond Debussy and Ravel: the world of the French piano in all it's dazzling variety, and in critically acclaimed recent recordings. Beyond a sensitivity to tone colour, very little unifies this eclectic list of French composers, who flourished from the end of the Romantic era into our own time. To move from the deft sketches of Reynaldo Hahn's Le Rossignol eperdu, and the scented harmonies of Benjamin Godard's Op.58 cycle of 20 Pieces, to the introverted gloom of Les Heures dolented by Gabriel eduard Xavier Dupont and the four-movement Solitude by Louis Vierne, and from the dense, Wagnerian counterpoint of sonatas by Vincent D'Indy and Paul Dukas, to the restless but crystalline textures of the early Sonata by Henri Dutilleux, is to stop off at quite different stations on a map of creative work full of destinations as distinct as any to be found on the Paris Metro. Critics have recognised that each of the artists involved has invested intellectual energy as well as technical mastery in immersing themselves within these individual worlds and personalities. Mark Viner captures Chaminade the poet beyond and further than the salon composer of repute, as well as measuring up to Alkan at his most surprisingly charming in some of the Etudes Op.35. Emanuele Torquati lends a more romantic sensibility to Roussel than we tend to associate with him, while Sofia Andreoli shows that there is an impressionist side to Magnard beyond the densely worked chromaticism of his symphonies and cantatas.

'His music tastes good': this was Debussy's tribute to the art of Deodat de Severac (1872-1921). Goodness and love are words that recur frequently when speaking of Severac, so much so that the pianist Blanche Selva - his teacher and biographer - wrote: 'The soul of Severac's music is love, because true love, in reality, is an aspiration, a cry, a caress of goodness.' Born in Apulia, a graduate of the conservatoire in Bari, Serena Valluzzi now gives recitals across Europe, while engaged as professor of piano at the conservatoire in Foggia. This album of Deodat de Severac marks her debut on Piano Classics, and is distinguished with the sensitive musicianship which won her prizes at the Busoni International Piano Competition and elsewhere. Descended from an ancient Languedoc family, related on his mother's side to the Aragons of Spain, Severac received his first music lessons from his painter father. He studied and worked further afield, becoming a friend and assistant to Isaac Albeniz, but his heart and his musical language remained rooted in his native Languedoc. Thus he was inspired to write en Languedoc, premiered by his friend (and Ravel's) Riccardo Vines in 1905. Impressionism meets folkloric colour and melody in the five movements of en Languedoc, evoking a lakeside reverie, a horseback gallop, a village feast and a profound elegy. This 'Coin de cimetiere au printemps' (Cemetery Corner in Spring) is one of his most inspired works: his friend Alfred Cortot admired it's 'resignation and ardour, tenderness and bitterness', with 'a long, slow melody that expands in all it's religious fervour and inconsolable melancholy.' Cerdana is another vividly picturesque five-movement suite, cousin to the likes of Albeniz's Iberia and Granados' Goyescas, deserving recognition alongside them as a major cycle of Franco-Spanish impressionism from the early 20th century. Serena Valluzzi completes this illuminating introduction to the art of Deodat de Severac with a teasingly allusive portrait in sound of bathers in the sun, 'Baigneuses au soleil', from 1908. - Deodat de Severac was a French composer whose work represents a bridge between the impressionist styles of Debussy and Ravel and the traditional music of southern France. Born in the Languedoc region, Severac's music is deeply rooted in the cultural and musical heritage of the French countryside, particularly the Occitan tradition. His piano music, while often categorized alongside the impressionists, is distinguished by it's rich evocation of regional landscapes and folk elements, making it uniquely vibrant and evocative. - This new recording presents the beautiful Baigneuses au Soleil, the suite en Languedoc, and the suite Cerdana. These compositions are marked by a lyrical sensitivity and a deep connection to nature, often eschewing the complex harmonic language of his contemporaries in favor of a more direct, folk-inspired style. - Despite his relatively small output, Severac's piano music is celebrated for it's warmth and ability to transport listeners to the idyllic landscapes that inspired him. His work remains an important, if somewhat underappreciated, contribution to early 20th-century French music, offering a refreshing contrast to the urban-centric themes prevalent in much of the music of his time. - Played with great sensitivity and feeling for colors by young Italian pianist Serena Valluzzi, winner of the Premio Alkan and prize winner of the Busoni and Casagrande competitions.

The third volume Ciro Longobardi's Messiaen, after the universal critical success of Volumes 1 & 2, focusing on the composer's best-loved piano cycle. With his Piano Classics collection of the Preludes, Quatre etudes de rythme, La fauvette des jardins and other shorter works, Ciro Longobardi announced himself as a Messiaen pianist of remarkable imagination and accomplishment. The critics duly took note: 'Longobardi showcases tremendous technical skill and an exceptional attentiveness. This album is a lush, intricate success-meaningful for Messiaen enthusiasts and enjoyable for those new to his work. I highly recommend it.' (Fanfare). The Catalogue d'oiseaux continued to attract superlatives: 'Hs performance makes you listen, through it's diverse use of dynamics and the expert use of silences. His playing is concise and bright and is best listened to with the accompanying booklet, in which his notes on the music expertly set the scene.' (MusicWeb International). Now the Italian pianist turns to the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus in which Messiaen most successfully synthesised a Lisztian tradition of virtuosity and tone-painting on the piano with his own spiritual and musical preoccupations: Catholic devotion, birdsong and Indian rhythmic syntax among them. Messiaen had lately completed what became a 'Tristan' trilogy of works including the Turangalila Symphony when, in 1948, he was commissioned by French radio to write pieces to accompany a broadcast of Christmas-themed poetry. The commission quickly outgrew it's original purpose, and Messiaen instead created a thematically unified cycle of pieces taking in contemplations of monumental reverence, jazz-inflected improvisations, fabulously intricate toccatas and more. At the heart of Vingt Regards lies the ineffable tenderness of the kiss bestowed on the sleeping infant by his mother in the most famous piece of the cycle, Le baiser de l'enfant Jesus. As a generous pairing, Ciro Longobardi also includes the 1985 cycle of piano miniatures, Petites Esquisses d'Oiseaux, which distil his lifelong love of birdsong into six exquisite portraits. These, like the Vingt Regards, are dedicated to his wife, the pianist Yvonne Loriod, who inspired his piano writing throughout his mature career, bringing a cyclical unity of it's own to the album.

De Gambarini: Complete Works for Keyboard

Christmas chez Liszt, imagined by one of the UK's most exciting piano virtuosos. Composed and compiled by Liszt between 1873 and 1881, the 'Christmas Tree' suite has more to offer than carol transcriptions and twinkly sketches of festive joy. It begins with one of the composer's typically free transcriptions of a plainsong Christmas hymn harmonised in the 17th century by Michael Praetorius, and takes in the procession of the Magi towards Bethlehem and a lullaby at the cradle, but also cuts away to contemporary times with a sparkling scherzo to depict the lighting of candles on the tree. The last four of the suite's twelve movements bear only tenuous connections to the festive season, yet they bring some of the most memorable inspirations of all: evocations of evening bells, of 'Yesteryear' in the composer's searching late style, and then Hungarian- and Polish-themed themed pieces. As Mark Viner remarks in his detailed booklet introduction to the album, there is nothing quite like Weihnachtsbaum even in Liszt's own prodigiously varied catalogue. It is impossible to categorise, and yet every bar sounds uniquely Lisztian. Perhaps even less familiar to most listeners, on account not least of it's sheer scale, is the vast three-part oratorio which Liszt based on the life of Christ. Liszt made solo-piano transcriptions of two Christmas-themed orchestral movements from the oratorio's first part, picturing in turn the Shepherds at the Manger and, once more, the 'march' of the Magi. In complement, Mark Viner presents the composer's pianistic translation of the ancient carol Christus natus est. Mark Viner's recordings for Piano Classics have attracted international acclaim. 'The melodies in his hands are not simply played, they are sung on the piano!' (Fanfare, reviewing a previous Liszt album, PCL0116). 'If Alkan could play it as Viner does here, no wonder he was the only pianist in front of whom Liszt was hesitant of playing.' (Gramophone, reviewing Viner's latest volume in his Alkan cycle, PCL10275).

Three vividly picturesque piano suites, evoking the colours and rhythms of Spanish life, in a new recording by a native artist trained within the long and distinguished Spanish piano tradition. Pedro Piquero trained with the Spanish pianist Esteban Sanchez, who had himself studied with Alfred Cortot before returning to his native Spain to pass on his insights into the kind of repertoire recorded here. Brilliant Classics issued a box of Sanchez's recordings of Albeniz, and this new recording of Turina's music by his former student forms a fitting sequel. The piano lay at the centre of Turina's life and work, as it did for his near contemporary Maurice Ravel. The piano became the expressive complement to the other instrument that accompanied Turina for most of his life: the camera. An amateur photographer, with an impeccable eye, he captured "objective" images with his camera and then "subjectivised" them in his music. Seville, his native city, was always with him, whether in presence or in essence, and was his most frequent source of inspiration, starting with his second published work. This 'painterly suite' in three movements takes extended snapshots of an orange grove; a prayerful night-vigil shortly before the Easter festivities; and then the celebrations of the Easter fair itself. Writing the suite in Paris in 1908, Turina describes in Debussyan style not so much the picturesque details of his chosen scenes, but the way he remembers them from far away. Expression reigns over illustration. In just the same way, the opening 'Exaltacion' of the Danzas fantasticas, encapsulates his relationship with Spanish folk music: evocation, rather than quotation or re-creation. After the atmospheric introduction, Turina conjures the jota, but his own version of the dance - as is also true of the seguidilla in the central section. This Op.22 set of dances, composed in 1919, became best known in Turina's later orchestration, but a pianist as capable as Pedro Piquero can evoke a palette of orchestral colours on the piano. One Spanish musicologist has described the Cinco danzas gitanas, composed in 1929, as 'unquestionably one of [Turina's] pianistic masterpieces.'

Ravel, Wagner & Liszt: Transcriptions for Piano 4-Hands

Recording Ravel's piano music for Piano Classics, the pianist Fran�ois Dumont won glowing reviews for performances to the manner born. 'There is much to envy and admire in Dumont's lucid and refined performances. He is ideally sensitive and accurate in 'Le gibet' (Gaspard) in a manner that would surely have won Ravel's admiration. Cool, elegant and affectionate... you will never catch him playing for effect, always respecting the composer's wish that his music should be played rather than interpreted.' (Gramophone) Dumont now brings his polished technique and refined musicianship to bear on music less frequently encountered in the concert hall but no less sophisticated, and often imbued with the most profound melancholy, the Nocturnes of Faur�. A previous set of the Chopin nocturnes also won golden opinions for Dumont's exquisite touch - the French high-fidelity magazine On-Top Audio rated it among the finest cycles on record - but Faur�'s universe is, if anything, even more private, more overtly expressive than Ravel's watchmaker delight in textures, yet flowing with undercurrents of troubled modernity. Composed over almost half a century, one by one unlike Chopin's sets, Faur�'s Nocturnes display the composer's style in evolution, from the apparent spontaneity and relatively carefree tone-pictures of the early pieces to the unfathomable interior world of the late works. Faur� himself had no special attachment to the genre, nor was he especially concerned to paint night-time moods and scenes. Rather, he poured into the genre many of his own private concerns and passions as a composer, experimenting time and again with syncopated rhythms and with luminous harmonies in order to create a mood of serenity and nostalgia that is uniquely his own. Dumont's new recording is accompanied by a personal essay from the pianist in which we gain valuable insight into each Nocturne from the perspective of a performer immersed in the idiom. On this recording he plays a Gaveau piano from 1922.

Thanks to his prodigious technique and phenomenal sight-reading ability, Earl Wild (1915-2010) became pianist for Arturo Toscanini in 1937, while still in his early 20s, and played Rhapsody in Blue with them in 1942. Gershwin also forms the centrepiece of this third volume in Giovanni Doria Miglietta's comprehensive survey of Wild's own music. The Grand Fantasy on Porgy and Bess works all the best-known themes from the opera into a spectacular half-hour of pianistic devilry and enchantment. Lisztian in scope - and in the use of 'Reminiscences' in it's title - Reminiscences of Snow White (1995) opens with glistening high-note scales, taking the listener into fairy-tale territories, with fragments of the principal themes of Disney's movie scattered across the musical texture, most notably 'Whistle while You Work'. Like Liszt, Wild had the gift of bringing popular music and high art together without compromising either idiom. Miglietta closes this dazzling album with Wild's outrageously entertaining transcription of Jarabe Tapatio, otherwise known as the Mexican Hat Dance. Before that he plays four reworkings of classical repertoire, all respectful of their originals and yet imbued with Wild's own effervescent personality: Le Rouet d'Omphale of Saint-Sa�ns, the Air and Variations from Handel's harpsichord suite 'The Harmonious Blacksmith', and two Tchaikovsky pieces, a song and a dance from Swan Lake. 'This is tremendously challenging music,' remarked Fanfare of the first volume in this series containing Wild's Piano Sonata, 'and Miglietta certainly has the virtuosity that it requires... Fans of this repertoire will want to hear his perspective - and will eagerly await the rest of the series.'

These rarely heard piano transcriptions of Wagner and Verdi operas share a common theme: Love and Death, the two most important themes of opera, as a reflection of human life and fate. First the pianist Abdiel Vazquez presents his own "Meistersinger Rhapsody", a stunning pianistic tour de force. The three Wagner transcriptions (Ride of the Valkyries, Siegmund's Love Song, Love Scene and Transfiguration from Tristan) are by Carl Tausig, Liszt's favourite pupil, an awesome pianist and composer, died tragically young. The Concert Fantasy over themes from La Forza del Destino is by Italian composer Giuseppe Martucci (a wonderful composer with a fine ear for instrumental colours), followed by two famous paraphrases by Liszt (Rigoletto, Aida). The disc finds a spectacular conclusion in the fiendishly difficult Trovatore Paraphrase by Gy�rgy Cziffra. Abdiel Vazquez is one of the foremost pianist of Mexico, a 1-rst Prize Winner of the New York Shining Stars Debut Series, which brought him his Carnegie Hall debut.