In his new GENUIN album, pianist Viktor Soos presents a musical dialogue between three individuals bound together by love, friendship, and artistic mastery. The prizewinner of the 2021 International Robert Schumann Competition performs works by Clara and Robert Schumann, as well as Johannes Brahms - three of the most renowned musicians of the Romantic era. These are key works from their respective oeuvres that move us today just as they did two centuries ago. In his historically grounded interpretation, Soos places particular focus on the hidden dedications found throughout the pieces on this album.

Andras Schiff has been closely associated with Lucerne Festival for 35 years. These live recordings from 1998/99, now released for the first time, present him interpreting two masters of the miniature: Schiff performs the short pieces with a love of risk, a great art of characterisation and a tremendous sense of sound.

This new album from pianist Peter Jablonski and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Lukasz Borowicz, includes the world premiere recording of pianist-composer Andre Tchaikowsky's (1935-1982) 1st Piano Concerto and the first studio recording of the composer's 2nd Piano Concerto together with the Piano Sonata.

Ex Nihilo brings together a diverse palette of music into one continuous flow. Ligeti's Musica Ricercata forms the spine of the programme, interwoven with 20th-century works that resonate with it and new interludes by Brecht Valckenaers. Together, they trace a lineage of invention-exploring how composers reimagine their musical language and the piano itself ex nihilo, "from nothing."

Consolations is Saskia Giorgini’s second Liszt album, after her critically-acclaimed rendition of the composer’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Named after Liszt’s six Consolations, the album also contains the Caprices-Valses, Valse Impromptu, Légendes and the world-famous Liebesträume. These introspective pieces shed light on love in all its forms and manifestations, showing us human nature in all its different aspects, as well as a different side of Liszt’s colourful musical persona. Saskia Giorgini is one of the most promising pianists of her generation, has won several competitions and is hailed for her technical command and the beauty and poetry of her sound. Her recording of Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses received a Diapason d’or, while BBC Music Magazine praised her “formidable technical ability, matched by the architectural sense, harmonic sensibility and coloristic range”, and Gramophone lauded her “masterful authority”. She also released Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (2020) and Respighi Songs (2021) – both with Ian Bostridge – on Pentatone.

The Flemish Music Heritage series is a journey of discovery, reviving remarkable pieces of musical heritage. Forgotten scores are brought to light, and familiar compositions are given a fresh perspective. In close collaboration with the Study Centre for Flemish Music, the recordings are founded on intensive research in libraries and archives and meticulously prepared score editions.? The works, expertly selected by connoisseurs, are performed by valued musicians and ensembles who passionately restore neglected and forgotten composers to the recognition they deserve. With these vibrant composer monographs, Antarctica Records aims to broaden horizons and enrich the repertoire with rediscovered treasures from the past. This third volume of the Flemish Music Heritage series focuses on piano works by Joseph Ryelandt (1870-1965). Spanning nearly five decades of his creative output, the recording features five piano works-including two early sonatas, the expressive Six Preludes, and two later works that highlight Ryelandt's evolution toward a more transparent, neoclassical style. Performed by Jozef de Beenhouwer, who has championed Ryelandt's music for decades, the album sheds light on a versatile and refined voice in Belgian musical history.

Bernhard Lang's Monadology XXXVI is a radical "meta-composition". It deconstructs Chopin's Op. 10 Études through granular analysis, loops, and virtual remixing-destroying and reassembling the score into new sonic textures. The cycle consists of 12 Etüden. The last three are dedicated to Daan Vandewalle, the internationally acclaimed pianist renowned for his mastery of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, who now brings them to this album.

The Stenzl brothers, Hans-Peter and Volker, invite you on a special kind of European journey with their new GENUIN album. In celebration of the anniversaries of Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Moritz Moszkowski, and Dmitri Shostakovich, they have recorded suites and individual pieces by these great composers, who often humorously look beyond their own cultural horizons. With sophistication, elegance, care, and emotion, they weave dances, melodies, and stories from all corners of the world into their music. As a distinguished German duo performing internationally for more than 30 years, they present these little treasures with a keen eye for both the larger musical narratives and intricate details - genuinely cosmopolitan!

The piano Duo FourTe - Eva-Maria Weinreich and Tomohito Nakaishi - presents it's debut album with GENUIN, unveiling a fresh perspective on Franz Liszt's symphonic poems, rendered with the monumental resonance of two concert grand pianos. Liszt himself transcribed his groundbreaking orchestral works for piano - both for two pianos and for four hands. Drawing from all three versions, the internationally acclaimed German-Japanese Duo FourTe has crafted a richly textured and colorful arrangement for two pianos, bringing Liszt's orchestral splendor and opulent sound world as close to the original as possible - a symphonic flight across 176 keys!

The largest part of the output of the Hamburg-born composer and writer Walter Niemann (1876–1973), a student of both Humperdinck and Reinecke, is piano music: an astonishing 1,000 or so pieces, divided into 189 opus numbers. Most of them are lyrical miniatures in a warm and approachable late-Romantic style, some evoking the music of the past. Occasionally, though, as in Hamburg, a recollection of scenes from his childhood, a degree of mild dissonance indicates his desire to stay true to his memories of growing up in a port city.

Volume 3 from Joseph Tong of Sibelius Piano Music recorded at the Sibelius Museum Turku, Finland. Joe Tong explains 'The selection of music on this album could form the basis for a concert programme and I wanted to combine a variety of styles from different creative periods of the composer’s life. My repertoire choices include some of Sibelius’s early works which are less well-known yet melodically captivating in themselves, the famous set of Six Impromptus Op. 5, a lighter collection of ‘8 Petits Morceaux’ Op. 99 and finishing with the 10 Pieces Op. 58, written in 1909 and arguably one of his greatest sets of piano pieces'.

My name is Slava Poprugin. I am a pianist, a teacher, a sound engineer and the owner of the Steppenwolf studio. Let me tell you a few words about myself. I was born in Khabarovsk, Russia, in 1973. I started going to a music school from 6 years old. After my graduation from Khabarovsk Music College in 1992 I moved to Moscow to study at the Gnessin Music Academy, one of the top-rated music conservatoires in Russia. My teaching career started when I was still a student in Khabarovsk. From 1999 till 2015 I was a senior teacher at the Moscow State Conservatoire, and from 2018 I was appointed a professor at the Royal Conservatoire the Hague in the Netherlands. I am a concert pianist with a big repertoire. During the last decades my preferences have changed from a passionate dedication to contemporary music to a broader spectrum of styles and genres. It gives me enormous pleasure to play chamber music with many musicians, my friends and colleagues. I am very proud of my 15 year long collaboration with the great cellist Natalia Gutman. Sound engineering was my hobby from the early years, and when in 2006 I was invited to record an album for Live Classics label, it has officially become my other profession. Since then my activities in this field were continuously expanding, resulting in launching my own recording studio in the Netherlands in 2016.

The present collection showcases studio and live recordings pianist Nelson Freire made for the SWR between 1968 and 1999. Though Freire was by his own account never really interested in a career and he even reduced considerably the number of live performances at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, he belongs to the most important pianists worldwide. A natural prodigy, Freire's style is characterised by elegance, charme and finnesse as well as deliberate avoidance of boasting.

Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard joins forces with the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen for a recording of Bartók’s complete piano concertos. A pianist himself; Bartók imbued his three concertos with multiple aspects of his compositional persona; ranging from complex and innovative (the First) to exuberant (the Second) and serene (the Third). The result is a fascinating slice of his musical life. This all-Bartók release marks the first Pentatone collaboration between Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony; an ensemble he has reshaped through creative performance concepts and expansive new media projects.

A renowned champion of twentieth-century music; Pierre-Laurent Aimard has released multiple acclaimed albums in his exclusive contract with Pentatone; including Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux (2018) and Visions de l’Amen (2022); along with Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata & Eroica Variations (2021). He also joined Tamara Stefanovich in Etudes and Frames (2023); with music by Vassos Nicolaou. Salonen returns to the label for the first time since his recording of Stravinsky’s Perséphone (2018); the San Francisco Symphony previously appeared on the 2005 Pentatone release Young America.

REVIEWS:

You know just within a couple of minutes these recordings are going to be special. As Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony sweep thrillingly into the First Piano Concerto’s Allegro, Pierre-Laurent Aimard luxuriates in the space they leave him on a superbly recorded disc…‘Definitive’ is a daft word to use about an interpretation. How can we truly know? But superlative this absolutely is.

-- The Sunday Times (★★★★★)

Ultimately, then, we’ve got something special here: a fresh take on some canonic works by a conductor and soloist whose bread-and-butter is this very fare. It’s an undertaking that flatters all parties involved musically, technically, and intellectually. Best of all, it draws out the latent mellifluousness of Bartók’s writing, even when, outwardly, that’s at its most hard-edged.

-- The Arts Fuse

In the second concerto I particularly admired the middle movement, with its opening on slow strings – which were silent in the first movement – and the fast toccata-like middle section generated exactly the right kind of excitement.

The third concerto is more different from the other two than they are from each other. It is mainly serene and graceful, remarkably so when one considers that it was written in wartime, in exile and when Bartók knew he did not have long to live...Aimard, slightly to my surprise, provides beautifully elegant phrasing and articulation and shows himself as much at home in the graceful writing here as he did in the much more challenging writing in the first two concertos...The recording is impeccable.

-- MusicWeb International

[Aimard] is aided and abetted every step of the way by the San Francisco Orchestra and its new(ish) music director...Salonen approaches these works as unapologetically modernist, and he has inspired the orchestra to shed the richly upholstered colors they developed under MTT for a less weighty, more severe color palette that ensures laser-like clarity even in the densest contrapuntal passages. The middle sections of concertos 1 and 2’s slow movements are particularly telling, and listen to the wind’s precision and leanness in the first concerto’s opening movement, which gives the music a mechanical brilliance. Pentatone’s engineers ensure the bass drum has plenty of impact. When Salonen conducted these concertos for Bronfman in Los Angeles, the Sony engineering highlighted that orchestra’s cinematic sound. Here we have a quite different sound palette that embraces a greater variety of hues in a true concert hall acoustic. 

Characterful...strongly recommended.

-- The Classic Review

Music of the classical and pre-classical periods is the language of ideas and gestures. Musical gesture becomes intelligible by recurrence and recognition. Turning an idea on one’s tongue, trying it out in slightly different wording, with a new intonation and in a changed voice creates the musical discourse — the story told, or the argument held. This is the definition of variation, and variation lies at the heart of musical expression.

The sonata form is sometimes considered nowadays as the greatest achievement of musical thought of that period, but composers of the 18th century were happy to turn to more humble forms. Of these, Variations and Fantasias are probably those with the most distinguished histories. In Variations, an idea is confined to the simplest frame of a musical period, unable to break its own formal boundaries, but free to mutate in all possible ways inside them; in the Fantasia, a musical thought is born, develops and flourishes with no seeming restraint, but for the free will of the composer to structure this flow, and yet, they have in common this constant tension between the urge to repeat an idea and the necessity of altering, transforming it. This hidden conflict feeds creativity and the imagination: it generates, ultimately, the classical style.

Her Story rather than "His Story": On her new GENUIN album, the remarkable Austrian pianist Mitra Kotte reexamines music history, placing women composers of the 19th and 20th centuries at the forefront. How many people truly know the works of Dora Pejacevic, Louise Farrenc, Cecile Chaminade, or Emilie Mayer as they deserve? Mitra Kotte, a prizewinner at international competitions, sheds light on a long-overlooked chapter of music. With great passion and the highest technical mastery, she introduces us to exquisite gems and profound works that leave us marveling both visually and aurally!

Watch our interview with Lara Downes on Love at Last!

Love at Last is pianist Lara Downes’s first Pentatone album, inspired by the poem Sachki, Sachki by the Odessa-born Jewish writer Shaul Tchernichovsky. Downes presents 24 pieces, many of them in world premiere recordings, of works by living composers around the globe. Spanning generations, continents and cultures, these diverse voices are united in a stubborn belief in the possibility of humanity, brotherhood, peace, and compassion, and in the everlasting power of love.

An iconoclast and trailblazer, Lara Downes’s dynamic work as a sought-after soloist, a Billboard Chart-topping recording artist, a producer, curator, arts activist and advocate positions her as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene. She was honored as 2022 Classical Woman of the Year by Performance Today.

Hear Downes's appearance on NPR's Morning Edition, discussing Love at Last!

REVIEWS:

It's not unusual for an artist to include a message to listeners on an album; it's less common for said message to be included as a concluding audio commentary. Such a move is, however, wholly consistent with Lara Downes' character: rather than share her message through the impersonal medium of the written word, she connects with immediacy using her voice, the illusion fostered of the artist speaking directly to you. Those who've been following the pianist throughout her career are familiar with her generosity of spirit, her resolute belief in the potential of human beings, her hope for peace, and her embracing vision. One comes away from a Downes recording, Love at Last no exception, renewed and uplifted.

An activist, mentor, and trailblazer, Downes expresses her appreciation for a vast array of artists from multiple countries and eras on her Pentatone debut. In a seventy-five-minute programme recorded in Mt. Vernon, New York in September 2022, pieces by J. S. Bach and Schubert sit comfortably alongside covers of standards and world premiere recordings of works by living composers from around the globe.

The journey, while scenic, panoramic, and ever-changing, is long; things move quickly, however, when the selections are compact in length and most two to three minutes at a time. Naturally, certain pieces register more strongly than others; what's never wanting, however, is investment on her part: she commits herself fully to the project and penetrates to the essential core of each piece. The evidence is audible the moment Jaroslav Ježek's haunting “Dawn” introduces the set until Shawn E. Okpebholo's arrangement of “Amazing Grace” ends it twenty-three songs later. Along the way, hope, sorrow, and tenderness surface, with a number of pieces written during the pandemic and confronting feelings of isolation and longing.

Downes' poised renderings of Bach's stirring “Wachet Auf” (“Sleepers Awake”) and Schubert's “Frühlingsglaube” (“Believe in Spring”) exemplify her general approach: refraining from embellishing on the material gratuitously, she opts instead to focus on themes and let their poetry emerge in its fullest possible form.

Downes' humanitarian values find expression in eloquent, life-affirming material such as Debbie Friedman's “Laugh at All My Dreams,” Margaret Bonds's “I Believe: Credo No. 2,” Gabriel Kahane's “Little Love,” and Valentin Silvestrov's “Lullaby.” One of the more interesting new compositions is Sean Hickey's “Fluid” for the way it both references gender fluidity and, by incorporating rhythmic and harmonic elements from Debussy's La Mer and Joni Mitchell's “River,” water. Memorable too are pianist Mariel Mayz's elaborate re-imagining of Sammy Fain's “I'll Be Seeing You,” the popular tune known through recordings by Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday, and Dobrinka Tabakova's enchanting “Simple Prayer for Complex Times.”

Downes' positive outlook isn't a reflection of childish naïveté or an obstinate refusal to acknowledge reality: she knows the world is fraught with problems and sees like the rest of us many parts struggling with debilitating issues. Even so, she determinedly holds to her values of love and compassion. For her, “this is the hour to awake from our sleep and greet a new dawn.” Like other recordings in her esteemed discography, Love at Last shines like a light fighting to overcome darkness and symbolizes the inexhaustible power of hope and resilience.

-- Textura

Mélanie Bonis (1858–1937), a fine pianist herself, composed some 150 works for solo piano, publishing them with her first name shortened to ‘Mel’ to disguise the fact that she was a woman – while she lived among the French haute bourgeoisie as Mme Domange. They sometimes show the influence of Chabrier, and have points of contact with the music of Chausson, Debussy and Pierné, who had been fellow students at the Paris Conservatoire. But they also reveal an individual approach to rhythm, harmony and tone-color – and it’s clear that her conventional exterior hid a lively sense of fun, her many miniatures for children perhaps influenced by her own experience as a mother.

REVIEW:

The music on this CD is well crafted and engaging. Bonis was undoubtedly a talented composer, and these works for piano stand comparison with those of Chabrier and Chaminade, to name two. The ornate Barcarolle, for example, is, with its chromatic cascades and passionate heaving and swelling, more than just a placid little row across the pond. Even a small piece, such as the Berceuse triste from the Cinq petites pièces, reaches an emotional depth. The Scènes enfantines, on the other hand, are more modest.

Pianist Mengyiyi Chen, now in her young 30s and educated at the Manhattan School of Music (and elsewhere), makes a good case for this music. Compared to Marie-Catherine Girod, who also played “Ophélie” on the aforementioned Schloss vor Husum CD, she is at least as good, and rather more dramatic. The piano is a Steinway D, and it has been recorded well.

— Fanfare

This second and final volume of Chopin’s Mazurkas by Peter Jablonski includes the composer's Mazurkas Nos. 30-51 alongside six posthumous mazurkas. For Chopin, the Mazurkas became a deeply personal, intimate statement of his feelings as an émigré Polish composer living in Paris. From some of his very first compositions to his last, it is the only form that Chopin composed regularly throughout his life. Similarly, Chopin’s Mazurkas have followed Peter Jablonski throughout his entire career as a pianist in nearly every solo recital. This album also includes Chopin’s final composition that was written just few weeks before his death, the Mazurka No. 49 in F minor (1849).

With this recording, Violetta Khachikyan releases her third solo album, dedicating herself to rarely performed works from the Renaissance, early Baroque and Classical periods, which take on new timbres and vitality on the grand piano of the 21st century. Particular mention should be made of the three composers Marianne von Martinez, elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre and Yekaterina Alexeyevna Vorontsova. Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin seems like a retrospective and at the same time an innovative creation from old dances and forms, complemented by new harmonies and technical inventions of the modern instrument.

Serie Bianca by Tactus offers this double CD encompassing the historic recordings of two monumental piano sonatas by Carlo Alessandro Landini (recently awarded for the Missa Novem Vocum, published in 2021, tc 951202). Sonatas No. 1 and No. 2 are in fact in their mighty dimensions (each composed in a single 74-minute movement) in which the composer seamlessly explores and utilises the relationship between sounds and their primordial harmonics, overcoming both the tripartite form and other formal structures. Performing the two works on the piano is Maestro Carlo Levi Minzi, internationally renowned concert artist and full professor at the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory in Milan.

The renowned Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo celebrates it's 30th anniversary in 2025. The duo has been honoured with numerous international awards and recordings. With the recording of all of Debussy's works in three volumes for piano duo, the Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo is now appearing on the Oehms label. The programme includes both well-known and lesser-known works, some of which are versions of orchestral works such as the famous Trois Nocturnes. The recording was made in co-operation with WDR Broadcast.

The renowned Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo celebrates it's 30th anniversary in 2025. The duo has been honoured with numerous international awards and recordings. With the recording of all of Debussy's works in three volumes for piano duo, the Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo is now appearing on the Oehms label. The programme includes both well-known and lesser-known works, some of which are versions of orchestral works such as the famous Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune. The recording was made in co-operation with WDR Broadcast.

Carlo Mazzoli and Silvia Rambaldi, passionate scholars of historical instruments and performance practice of early music, were teachers for many years - respectively of Piano and Harpsichord - at the Conservatorio "G.B. Martini" in Bologna, where they realised numerous teaching and concert projects. They have had a constant point of reference in Maestro Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, with whom they have collaborated assiduously in the activities of the San Colombano Museum in Bologna, which has housed it's collection of historical instruments since 2010; they are both present with some performances, both solo and in duo, in the DVD Il vibrar dell'aria dedicated to the Museum. It was precisely with performances on these ancient instruments that the study of Clementi's works for duo began, leading to this first complete recording.

The renowned Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo celebrates it's 30th anniversary in 2025. The duo has been honoured with numerous international awards and recordings. With the recording of all of Debussy's works in three volumes for piano duo, the Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo is now appearing on the Oehms label. The programme includes both well-known and lesser-known works, some of which are versions of orchestral works such as the famous La Mer. The recording was made in co-operation with WDR Broadcast.