'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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

A new recording of two major Reger cycles, by a fast-emerging British piano talent. 'To fathom his all-powerful might, no human may accomplish' - this is the text, from a duet in Bach's Cantata BWV128, which Reger takes as the subject of his Bach Variations, and it may fairly be advanced that Reger accorded Bach a comparably divine status. At the age of just 31, Reger had by this stage assimilated not only Bachian counterpoint but it's transformation through the ears and imaginations of Schumann and Brahms and others, and he proceeds to treat the theme with astonishing freedom, testing the technique of the performer while reaching for the limits of the theme's musical possibilities over the course of 14 variations. The cycle concludes with a mighty fugue - or fugues, on separate subjects (of Reger's own devising, eventually welded with the Bach theme). In his booklet essay, Eden Walker remarks that the final bars are 'some of the most colossal and victorious of any in the entire piano repertoire.' By contrast, as a salutary demonstration of Reger's versatility, the Traume am Kamin present him at his most relaxed and intimate, and anyone who has found it hard to warm to Reger will surely find in this cycle a delightful entry-point to an often forbidding catalogue. 'Dreams by the Fireside' - Reger's knotty chromatic harmony still underpins the progress of these Romantic sketches, but now disguised by a touch of the 'lateness' that comes over many artists towards the end of their lives or careers, whether or not they were aware of it. This cycle was Reger's final piano cycle before his death in 1916, aged 41, and the mood of the cycle is perhaps also marked by a necessary escapism from the violent bloodshed around him. Born in 1995, Eden Walker has become a specialist in the ultra-virtuoso end of Romantic piano writing at the hands of composers such as Alkan, Busoni and Godowsky (and Reger). Based in Hamburg, he now teaches at the Staatliche Jugendmusikschule, as well as furthering his own studies and giving concerts across Germany and the UK.

New recordings of late Beethoven at his
most heroic and visionary.
Andrea Molteni plays Scarlatti with ‘ringing
tone and virtuosic agility’ reported Fanfare
magazine of the Italian pianist’s collection of
sonatas on Piano Classics (PCL10233). The
Art Music Lounge praised his bold
juxtaposition of Petrassi and Dallapiccola
(PCL10222) as ‘a strange but wonderful
album’, noting that ‘Molteni sparkles as he
rips through the music with energy and
élan’.
These qualities hold him in good stead for
the rigours of late Beethoven. With his
‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata of 1818, the
composer challenged pianists and listeners
alike to assimilate a work unprecedented in
its length and complexity. Motivically linked
by a descending third through the eventful
course of its four movements, the Sonata
opens with a precipitous Allegro. A mordant
Scherzo then introduces a long and
spiritually engaged slow movement, before
the mighty finale hurtles towards its epic
conclusion through a densely wrought
fugue. In each aspect, then, the Sonata
outlines blueprints for what would become
known as Beethoven’s late style, whether
expressed in solo, chamber, orchestral or
vocal music. The most celebrated single
result of that late style is the Grosse Fuge
which Beethoven wrote as the finale to his
String Quartet Op.131. Persuaded by his
publisher to substitute it for a less arduous
conclusion, Beethoven left this mighty fugue
to stand on its own, and so it has stood ever
since, as a ferocious yet rewarding exercise
of concentration and contrapuntal art.
Molteni presents it in a 19th-century
arrangement made by Louis Winkler which
has attracted surprisingly few recordings.
At the centre of Molteni’s recital, the Sonata
Op.110 offers salutary contrast. Here too are
examples of heroism, rustic humour and
melancholy, but distilled to an essence of
vitality.

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.

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).

The first recording of another monumental work for piano by the composer of Opus clavicembalisticum and Sequentia cyclica.

Kaikhosru Sorabji tended to discourage performances of his music, feeling that most musicians not only lacked the technical equipment and dedication to conquer his vast scores, but also that they would not satisfactorily grasp their spiritual content. Born in a London suburb of Parsee origin, living for much of his life on a remote Scottish island, Sorabji died in 1988, and only in the last two decades have advances in digital publishing enabled his many unperformed and intimidatingly large pieces to be transferred from manuscript, and then taken on by dedicated performers such as the British pianist Jonathan Powell, whose first recording of the eight-hour Sequentia Cyclica won widespread praise on its release by Piano Classics: Sorabji’s ‘most inclusive and revealing major statement’ according to Gramophone, ‘a wilful yet engrossing challenge that, in Powell, has met its match.’ Composed in the mid-1950s, the Toccata terza had been thought lost until the score turned up in 2019, and Abel Sánchez-Aguilera has produced his own critical edition in order to make this first recording: a monumental labour of love and skill. The Toccata is cast in ten sections, including a 50-minute Passacaglia – one of Sorabji’s favourite forms – and the kind of thorny counterpoint and mountainous climaxes which will be familiar to followers of his music. There are four extant Toccatas: ‘They seem to look back to the examples of Bach and Busoni,’ as Sánchez-Aguilera remarks in his booklet introduction, ‘reinvented in Sorabji’s personal language and expanded to monumental proportions. Notwithstanding their complexity, several features make them particularly effective and accessible to the listener. They make use of familiar procedures – such as the variation and the fugue – and thus establishing clear links with tradition.’

No Sorabji collector will ignore this major new release of his music, and searchers for rarities in the hyper-virtuoso piano repertoire will discover a new treasure.

The first volume in an adventurous new series juxtaposing the piano music of Shostakovich with his most talented pupils. All three of the younger composers here demonstrate the individuality of their own voice.

Least known of them now is German Galynin (1922-1966). In 1951, the year in which he paradoxically obtained the Stalin Prize for his Epic Poem on Russian Themes, Galynin began suffering from schizophrenia that he was admitted to an asylum, and continued to received psychiatric care for the rest of his short life. He wrote this five-movement Suite in 1945, while still a student at the Conservatoire, and it alternates somewhat prophetically between moods of mania and melancholy.

Shostakovich himself cited Alemdar Karamanov (1934-2007) as one of the most original composers of his time. Ukrainian born but of Turkish parentage, he studied in Moscow before returning to Crimea, converting to Christianity and thus consigning himself to obscurity at the time, and his later music shares an experimental, visionary quality with contemporary pioneers such as Schnittke, Denisov, and Gubaidulina. The Variations for piano (1962) belong to the last phase of his Moscow period.

The career of Boris Tchaikovsky (1925-1996) proceeded along smoother lines. The single-movement Sonatina from 1946 is again a student work, albeit a highly talented and disciplined one, with the kind of thorough-going understanding of Classical form which Shostakovich evidently instilled in and expected from his students.

Fernanda Damiano juxtaposes these pianistic rarities with several pieces which demonstrate the breadth of style and confidence of artistic personality that made Shostakovich stand out from his contemporaries. Alongside the fleet-fingered brilliance of the Three Fantastic Dances and the Polka from his ballet The Golden Age, she plays a trio of Preludes and Fugues (Nos. 1, 7 & 24) from the collection he wrote for Tatiana Nikolaeva, another pupil, in 1950-51.

Isn't the will not to be expressive already an expression? This is the rhetorical question which the Iranian pianist Arash Rokni wanted to answer, in a unique recital on record coupling high-Romantic and early-Modernist works. ‘Perhaps Paul Hindemith asked himself the same question,' Rokni muses in his introduction to the album, 'when he wrote the instructions for the player in his Nachtstück 'not to play without expression, not with expression, but only with a little expression!’

Born in Tehran in 1993, Rokni grew to love classical music through his parents, and he gained a place at the Tehran Music School before pursuing further specialist studies in Germany, at the conservatoires in Leipzig and Cologne, and he now holds teaching posts in both Cologne and Hannover. He won second prize and audience prize in the Bach Competition in Leipzig in 2018.

Arash Rokni has played and studied with Andreas Staier, having a particular interest in Classical and Romantic performance practice. This release marks his debut on Piano Classics, and establishes him as a thoughtful and accomplished musician with individual ideas about repertoire both familiar and lesser known. He plays two contrasting instruments, each chosen to complement the soundworld of their repertoire: an 1890 Bluthner for the Schumann and Brahms pieces, and a modern Paulello for Mosolov and Hindemith.

Mosolov is known for a single brief piece, the Iron Foundry for orchestra which won a kind of infamy for its naturalistic brutality. There is of course a good deal more to him than unrelenting dissonance, and his piano music shares with his contemporary Alexander Scriabin a mystical character, floating between and in and out of key signatures. Its specifically ‘expressive’ character is not straightforward, any more than the Suite 1922 where Hindemith plays with pop styles of the time such as jazz and ragtime. The expression of Schumann’s Bunte Blätter is not necessarily more straightforward, and Brahms made his own interpretation of it with a set of Variations which he wrote on the first piece in Schumann’s cycle.

Fanny Mendelssohn, Vol. 2

Alkan: Early Works & Juvenilia

An audiophile LP transfer presents a highly praised recording of a monumental tribute from one great artist to another.

Arvo Pärt, likely the most performed living composer, found inspiration to compose Lamentate in 2002 from a work by sculptor Anish Kapoor. Kapoor's sculpture, titled Marsyas, alludes to the classical legend of the satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical contest and faced a brutal fate for his audacity. Occupying the vast expanse of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London, Kapoor's sculpture evokes humanity's Promethean daring in abstract form. In response, commissioned by the Tate, Pärt crafted his largest work of instrumental music.

Upon encountering the sculpture, Pärt remarked, "my first impression was that I, as a living being, was standing before my own body and was dead, as in a time-warp perspective, at once in the future and the present. Suddenly, I found myself put in a position in which my life appeared in a different light." Comprising 10 movements spanning 40 minutes, Lamentate transcends grief for a specific individual, elevating its themes to more universal concerns.

"Death and suffering are the themes that concern every person born into this world," Pärt reflects. "Accordingly, I have written a lamento – not for the dead, but for the living, who have to deal with these issues for themselves. A lamento for us, who don’t have it easy dealing with the pain and hopelessness of the world." Pärt's composition contributes to a tradition of semi-sacred or secular liturgies of grief, remembrance, and transfiguration, echoing works like Brahms' German Requiem, Strauss' Four Last Songs, and Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls.

This Spanish-made version, previously released on CD and digital formats, garnered critical acclaim for its dedicated performance and the depth of field in its engineering. The new transfer to the analogue format of LP underscores the richness of the recording's sound.

A luxury-grade vinyl transfer in a gatefold 2LP set for a beautifully engineered 2021 album of Scarlatti on the piano from a master German pianist.
On its CD release in 2022, this personal choice from Scarlatti’s 555 keyboard sonatas won an enthusiastic welcome from Gramophone. ‘Contrasts of mood together with unified relationships of tempo and key signature characterise one the most intelligently programmed and distinctively played Scarlatti collections to cross my reviewer’s desk in years.’

Hardly less than Bach, these sonatas have become for many pianists a proving ground for their own technique and imagination, rewarding an improvisatory response to their flamboyant effects. Schmitt-Leonardy also features several of Scarlatti’s most poetic and reflective sonatas such as the ‘Aria’ Kk 29 and the melancholy soliloquy of Kk 208.
The approach taken by Schmitt-Leonardy is always ‘pianistic’, in that he exploits the full tonal resources of a modern concert grand. Yet his phrasing is also sensitive to 18th-century style and to the kind of effects and articulation particular to the harpsichord for which Scarlatti was writing. ‘Kaleidoscopic nuances and dynamic gradations abound throughout the E major Kk135,’ continued the Gramophone reviewer Jed Distler, the Gramophone reviewer Jed Distler, ‘but not garishly so. Nor does the pianist’s curvaceous and tapered phrasing throughout the A major Kk322 lapse into mannerism or cliché.’
As with all Brilliant Classics and Piano Classics LPs, this set is issued on 180-gram, high-grade vinyl pressed at the Optimal factory in Hamburg. Its audiophile quality is worthy of performances which bear comparison with great Scarlatti performers of past and present from Horowitz to Pletnev. Inner-sleeve booklet notes by Peter Quantrill discuss each of the sonatas in turn.

The most complete set of Lekeu’s piano music ever recorded, demonstrating the full range of genius cut off in his prime.

After his death from typhoid fever at the age of just 24, in January 1894, Debussy and many others lamented the passing of a musician with the world at his feet. ‘There is a Belgian school,’ wrote Debussy in 1896. ‘Next to Franck, Lekeu is one of its most remarkable representatives, this Lekeu, the only musician to my knowledge whom Beethoven really inspired.’

Partly due to his sudden demise, very little of his extant music has been published; among the works for piano only the monumental, five-movement Sonata in G minor, an album of three beautiful short pieces written in 1892, and a Mazurka. Jacopo Salvatori demonstrates, on this groundbreaking new album, how much else there is for pianophiles and enthusiasts for French romanticism to enjoy.

In his booklet note, Salvatori describes how he tracked down the manuscripts for several pieces heard here effectively for the first time. They include a beautiful four voices fugue written in 1889, a piece clearly influenced by the teaching of Franck. There is also a series called Morceaux egoists, of which some are lost, but there are pointers in what survives towards a different side of Lekeu to the one known from the familiar, Wagnerian richness of the Violin Sonata. Even the Piano Sonata takes on a different complexion as potentially more of a Suite, somewhat loosely assembled, but unified by a poetic motto from the writer George Vanor. Shedding such light on Lekeu makes Salvatori’s album a unique and valuable contribution to the appreciation of a still little-known but powerfully talented voice of the Belle Epoque.

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.’

As the pre-eminent forerunners to Chopin’s works in the same genres, the Nocturnes of John Field have few rivals for music well known by history but so seldom heard. They were largely inspired by the slow movements of Classical concertos, Mozart above all, as well as opera arias. From them, Field evolved his own firm concept of a form with rich harmonies and gentle dynamics to suggest the night and dreaming, though in fact he began by giving these pieces traditional names such as Pastorale, Serenade and "Romance. He wrote the 18 works not as a set, but over the course of 15 years, rarely completing more than one and never more than three in a single year. Liszt observed in them ‘The total absence of everything that looks to effect'.

Even when he settled upon Nocturne, Field bestowed upon some of them a qualifying subtitle: ‘Cradle Song’ (No.6), ‘Reverie’ (No.7), ‘Song Without Words’ (No.13), ’Nocturne Pastorale’ (No.17), and ‘Nocturne characteristique Midi’ (No.18). This last Nocturne stands apart from its companions as a tribute to midday, cast as an Allegro, with a coda in which a chiming clock strikes twelve as quicker notes laugh and dance around the repeated note.

As a window on the salons of 19th century Europe, the Nocturnes are taxing neither to play nor to listen to, but they are polished with painstaking finesse, and they demand from the performer all the subtle pianistic guile of Chopin’s works: notably a command of rubato to shape the melodies, and the imaginative and technical capacities of a coloristic palette to bring variety without eccentricity to the sequence.

Tyler Hay can call upon such talents and skills as critics have recognized in his previous recordings for Piano Classics such as an album devoted to the music of John Ogdon (PCL10132) ‘Tyler Hay is a formidable pianist… I believe John Ogdon would be very pleased by these performances of his music’ (Fanfare). ‘The young pianist Tyler Hay has brilliantly mastered and assimilated these often elusive scores, even to the point where I heretically prefer his interpretations to Ogdon’s’ (Gramophone).

The only collected survey of George Benjamin’s
piano music on record, from a Dutch pianist
who specialises in new music and has worked
closely with the composer.
Benjamin was an accomplished pianist as well
as composer from his early years, and it seems
natural in retrospect that his first published
work should be the Piano Sonata he composed
in 1977-8, as a prodigious student of Olivier
Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. Certain harmonic
touches may mark the sonata out as the work
of ‘a Messiaen pupil’ but the unsettled, leaping
gestural sense of the piece is particular to
Benjamin. So much of Benjamin’s later music is
fascinatingly prefigured here, including a sense
of timing for a gradual accumulation of tension
(‘stormy eruptions’ and ‘savage violence’ in
the composer’s words) that marks out his first
major orchestral score, Ringed by the Flat
Horizon. Underlying that sense of timing is a
feeling for dramatic gesture which has found
its natural expression in a series of operas
written during the last 20 years.
Dedicated to Loriod, Sortilèges (1981) makes
clear its French heritage in the notes as well as
the title, while the three subsequent Studies
for piano, composed over the next four years,
find Benjamin working out intricate rhythmic
problems and their solutions. Even the
Relativity Rag takes a quirky, sideways look at
its superficially familiar material. The next
piano pieces had to wait until 2001, and the
Shadowlines which Benjamin wrote for PierreLaurent Aimard. This set of six canonic preludes
takes Benjamin’s inclination to distill and pare
back to a new level, while the piano writing
itself is richer and more unselfconsciously
informed by the heritage of piano literature.
Finally, there are the Piano Figures of 2004,
written for students of the piano and
accordingly pitched at a technically lower level
than the other pieces, but no less preoccupied
with the rhythmic games and sudden swerves
of thought that are hallmarks of his most
complex music. All these pieces have been
recorded, but never by the same pianist,
making Erik Bertsch’s new collection unique,
and indispensable for any collector of new
music.

De Gambarini: Complete Works for Keyboard

A superb, collector’s-item vinyl transfer for a recent and widely acclaimed recording of Bach’s nocturnal meditations. When Piano Classics released this recording of the Goldberg Variations on CD in 2022, critics praised its natural phrasing and unobtrusively skilful and sensitive response to the technical demands made by Bach in his most virtuosic piece of keyboard writing.

According to Fanfare magazine, the playing of Klára Würtz ‘has limpid clarity, and rhythmic firmness and exactitude; her articulation is clean and nimble (she has a cleaner trill than Perahia), and her voicing of different lines is splendidly balanced. Her rapid playing is vigorous, her slower playing has calm repose. Her interpretive outlook has spirit and vivacity, but also a total sense of confidence and security, the kind of integrity that needs no ostentatious display to make its mark of absolute rightness... Perahia now has a pianistic rival on my shelf; strongly recommended.’ Reviewers elsewhere were hardly less enthusiastic. ‘Cards on the table, what Würtz’s Goldbergs offer is calm appreciation of the music’s manifold beauties,’ according to Rob Cowan in Gramophone. ‘Her pianism sidesteps overt display or affectedness in favour of purely musical values... This for me is truly great piano playing, a direct route to the soul with no tiresome diversions along the way.’ Vinyl collectors can now enjoy this superb recording in a new transfer made for analogue at the Edel factory in Hamburg, which specialises in collector’s print LP editions such as this one.

The heavy-grade vinyl has exemplary quiet surfaces, and the Dutch church acoustics of the original recording gain a rounded, luminous quality which ideally complements Klára Würtz’s pianism. The set is issued as a 2LP gatefold with booklet notes on the inner sleeve.