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Shostakovich, D.: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 / 24 Preludes
Delos Jan 2007
CD
$18.99

SCHUMANN & MOSCHELES: 1851 CELLO SONATAS

HYPERION

$16.60 Feb 13, 2026

Steven Isserlis -"Schumann & Moscheles: 1851 Cello Sonatas" "Prepare to be seduced," (Gramophone). Steven Isserlis's latest album takes inspiration from a single year: 1851, a year of invention, exhibition and creativity. Sonatas by Moscheles and Schumann (Violin Sonata No 2, specially arranged for cello by Isserlis) both date from that year. Also featuring four miniatures, including a Schumann song transcription and the famous Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria." The album centers around an 1851 Erard piano (played by Connie Shih) which won a Prize Medal at that year's Great Exhibition in London. The piano recorded here may well be one of the very instruments first showcased at the Great Exhibition Winner of 2 Gramophone Awards. Steven Isserlis CBE enjoys a global career as a cellist, author and broadcaster.

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SCHUMANN & MOSCHELES: 1851 CELLO SONATAS
HYPERION Feb 2026
CD
$16.60

Mix & Match

Rachmaninov: Piano Sonatas / Wang

Chandos

$10.99 ~~$21.99~~ Save 50% May 27, 2014

It’s not easy to make Rachmaninov’s prolix First Sonata cohere, yet not impossible. For example, Alexis Weissenberg’s gaunt tone, febrile temperament, and paragraphic sweep give shape and clarity to the work’s vast textural tundra. By contrast, Xiayin Wang often adapts a more lyrical approach and luxuriates in the keyboard writing while keeping a grip on momentum.

At first she seems to stretch out and sectionalize the right hand’s three-note phrases at bar 33 in the first movement, yet she’s simply leaning into the composer’s intentionally accented downbeats. The pianist allows inner voices and hidden melodies their songful due, even when they threaten to be obliterated by big, galumphing chords strutting in opposite directions. Her warm, sensitively voiced Lento shines among this movement’s finest recorded versions, notwithstanding Weissenberg’s more effectively translucent soft passages. While Wang clearly articulates the third movement’s complex thematic interactions (complete with its Dies irae quote), some of the obsessive dotted rhythms and driving climaxes bog down instead of being swept away.

Three Op. 23 Preludes provide an entr’acte. I understand the expressive intent behind Wang’s dynamic hairpins and tiny accelerations in No. 4, yet they wind up tangling up textural balances and cause the melodic thread to veer on and off a steady, floating course. Conversely, No. 5’s march motive truly swaggers, while Wang projects the Trio’s dynamic surges and famous countermelody with full-bodied presence. All the more surprising that she holds back in No. 6, which lacks the expansive dynamism and long line of Vladimir Ashkenazy’s reference recording.

I suspect that Wang has lived longer with the Second Sonata (heard here in the composer’s 1931 revision), for she knocks it out of the park. Wang keeps significant thematic matter, harmonic felicities, and magic transitional moments (such as the slow movement’s recollection of the opening movement’s first theme) in clear focus. At the same time she takes virtuosic flourishes, scintillating runs, and other decorative patterns out for a proverbial joyride, unpredictably speeding up and slowing down, yet maintaining continuity, flow, and excitement without a trace of vulgarity. Well, maybe a trace. But who cares? In short, a disc that gets off to a promising, searching start, and ends with a decisive knockout.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

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Rachmaninov: Piano Sonatas / Wang
Chandos May 2014
CD
~~$21.99~~ $10.99

SILVER LINING SUITE

TELARC

$16.49 Oct 08, 2021

Hiromi's 2021 album, Silver Lining Suite, pairs her virtuosic and emotive piano with a string quartet assembled by violinist Tatsuo Nishie, concertmaster of the New Japan Philharmonic. Devised for a series of live-streamed concerts at the Blue Note Tokyo during the Covid pandemic, the results blur the lines between classical music and jazz, crafting a vibrant hybrid possessed of the fervent, rock-inspired energy and cinematic beauty that Hiromi has always instilled in her music

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SILVER LINING SUITE
TELARC Oct 2021
CD
$16.49

Tamberg: Joanna Tentata Suite, Symphonic Dances, Concerto Grosso / Jarvi, Hague Residentie

BIS

$21.99 Jun 01, 2010

Estonian composer Eino Tamberg (b. 1930) is the real deal--a composer with a fresh take on traditional tonal music who knows how to write tunes and score them with unfailing color and point. His Concerto Grosso--for flute, trumpet, clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, piano, harp, strings, and percussion--is a masterpiece of 20th century neo-classicism and it deserves to be a repertory item. It dates from 1956 and at only Op. 5 it announces a major talent. The Symphonic Dances arrived a year later and fall within similar stylistic parameters, from the opening tune that has a Poulenc-like wit, to the three saxophones that give Tamberg's scoring a truly modern feel.

If you had the chance to hear Tamberg's 1976 opera Cyrano de Bergerac (and if you didn't, get it--it's on CPO), then you already know that he has a wonderful feeling for the theater, and for writing dramatic music. The ballet Joanna Tentata is based on the same source that gave us Penderecki's opera The Devils of Loudon. Now let's face it, stories about demonic possession in a convent have lots of juicy potential, as well as a long history on the stage, going back through Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel to Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable. Tamberg's ballet suite instantly establishes the story's haunted setting (church bells leading to a big, dissonant instrumental pileup), but the music at the same time celebrates and positively reeks of the dance. And once again we can only applaud Tamberg's willingness (and ability) to write a good tune.

Believe it or not, some of this music has been recorded previously. The Concerto Grosso appeared on a difficult-to-source Antes CD in a very fine performance by Estonian forces. This new version is wonderful too, even more naturally recorded, and Neeme Järvi is just the conductor for this colorful, exciting, and strongly gestural music. The musicians of the Residentie Orkest also clearly relish Tamberg's ebullient musical personality and the opportunities he gives them to shine. We can only hope that BIS will delve more deeply into Tamberg's output and help to bring him some of the international attention he surely deserves.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Tamberg: Joanna Tentata Suite, Symphonic Dances, Concerto Grosso / Jarvi, Hague Residentie
BIS Jun 2010
CD
$21.99

British Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 / Callaghan, Bell, Vass, BBC Music NOW

Lyrita

$20.99 Sep 01, 2023

Gordon Jacob’s Piano Concerto no.2 in E flat was completed in 1957 and premiered on 11 July of that year at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth by the soloist Edith Vogel. A Proms performance took place at the Royal Albert Hall on 9 August 1957 with the same soloist. A review in The Times of the 1957 Proms performance of Gordon Jacob’s Piano Concerto No.2 declared that ‘the composer’s masterly understanding of the orchestra enables him to express each idea economically and in the most clean and attractive colours’, while The Sunday Times’ critic wrote that, ‘having taught the craft of orchestration to a whole generation of composers, Dr. Jacob is himself a past master at clear and effective scoring’.

Addison’s Variations for Piano and Orchestra was written in 1948 and revised the following year. According to Alan Poulton’s Dictionary-Catalog of Modern British Composers, It was first performed in a BBC broadcast in 1960 by Margaret Kitchin. The work is written for a small orchestra, comprising double woodwind, four horns, a pair each of trumpets and trombones, bass trombone, timpani, modest percussion and strings. Though the piano had played a prominent role in an earlier student piece by Rubbra, his Piano Concerto, Op.30 (1932) is the composer’s first fully-fledged, large-scale work for soloist and orchestra. The score features an elaborate solo part and requires substantial orchestral forces.

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British Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 / Callaghan, Bell, Vass, BBC Music NOW
Lyrita Sep 2023
CD
$20.99

5 PIANO CONCERTOS

BelAir Classiques

DVD

$23.99 ~~$31.99~~ Save 25% May 26, 2015

For most of the last fifteen years, the destiny of pianist and conductor Christian Zacharias has been linked with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, of which he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director from 2000-13. His leadership resulted in invitations to prestigious venues and led to numerous recordings. He was named Artist of the Year at Cannes MIDEM, 2007 and in 2010 received the rank of Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters. This 2-DVD Bel-Air release of Beethoven's complete piano concertos presents Mr. Zacharias at the piano as well as conducting the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.

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5 PIANO CONCERTOS
BelAir Classiques May 2015
DVD
~~$31.99~~ $23.99

2 Pianos, 8 Hands
Tantara Records Jul 2003
CD
$13.99

Debussy: Etudes; Children's Corner / Karis

Bridge Records

$18.99 Jan 03, 2020

This recording presents two of Claude Debussy's enduring masterpieces- the Children's Corner suite (1908), and his brilliant- Études (Books 1 & 2) (1915), played by the American pianist, Aleck Karis. Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman. His two albums on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. He is a Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, and Associate Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.

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Debussy: Etudes; Children's Corner / Karis
Bridge Records Jan 2020
CD
$18.99

Barber: The Complete Solo Piano Music / John Browning

Nimbus

$16.99 Jan 01, 2009

Essential listening.

Samuel Barber wrote his Piano Concerto for John Browning (1933-2003) who gave the première at the inaugural celebrations for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York in 1962. The work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has become the most frequently performed American Piano Concerto – Browning himself gave about 400 performances of the work. He also recorded it twice – in 1964, with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra for CBS. The first is on Sony Essential Classics SBK87948, coupled with the Violin Concerto with Isaac Stern and the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. He returned to it in 1991 with Leonard Slatkin and the St Louis Symphony (for BMG/RCA Red Seal). This latter brought Browning his first Grammy award. The present disk, when it appeared on MusicMasters in 1993 earned him his second for “Best Classical Instrumental Soloist without Orchestra”. In 1994 Browning partnered Cheryl Studer and Thomas Hampson in a complete recording of Barber’s complete songs on Deutsche Grammophon 435 867–2. Thus we can see that if ever a pianist was immersed in Barber’s piano works Browning was the man.

Barber’s piano music covers his whole career and the styles of the pieces employ almost as many different languages. Take his masterpiece for the instrument – the Sonata. Commissioned by Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the League of Composers it is a tersely and cogently argued work. It employed twelve note technique, but never loses sight of tonality. It was premièred by Vladimir Horowitz. It’s a tour de force of piano writing and is a ferociously difficult work both to play and to listen to. It gives little respite to both performer and listener and needs repeated hearings to get to grips with its language. Horowitz recorded the work in 1950 on RCA Victor: 60377-2-RG coupled with Kabalevsky’s 3rd and Prokofiev’s 7th Sonatas. This is the touchstone by which all pianists must be measured. Browning plays this complex work to the manner born. Perhaps his performance is not as idiomatic as that by Horowitz but, like van Cliburn, he has his own ideas on how the music should be interpreted. Although he doesn’t quite make it his own – Horowitz can rest easy here – he makes a very persuasive case for the work and this is a superb performance.

The next biggest piece is the set of four Excursions – Barber’s first major piano work. They are based on old American songs and musical vernacular: the first movement is a kind of boogie–woogie, the second a blues, the third uses The Streets of Laredo as its melodic idea and the last is a square dance. Although lighter in texture and feel they are no less virtuosic than the Sonata. These are delightful pieces, unpretentious and easy–going and Browning is totally at home with them, making them sing and bringing out a little nostalgia as well. Delicious stuff.

The late Ballade was written for the Van Cliburn competition. It’s a hot-house affair which owes more than a little to the highly flavoured music of Scriabin. The composer packs a lot into a short playing time. Interlude I is a surprisingly big piece with big ambitions. Considering its early compositional date it is surprisingly mature and well wrought. Finally, the Nocturne, another Browning première of a piece by Barber. It’s a highly decorated work, full of filigree work. Browning has said that perhaps it is more of a homage to Chopin than Field. Certainly there is more of the former in its keyboard layout than the latter.

There’s little that can be said of this recital except that is essential listening and the performances are as committed as one could hope for. Browning’s was a major talent which was heard all too infrequently outside the USA so we must be grateful for his recordings. His major competitor is Daniel Pollack (Naxos 8.550992) and he gives all the works here plus the Three Sketches (1923/1924) and an arrangement for solo piano of the ballet suite Souvenirs. His disk is worth having for these two extra pieces but it cannot be considered as a sole choice for this music when this collection is so good. This is well worth having on the shelf both as a reminder of a great pianist and as an example of some of the most refined piano music to come out of America in the 20th century.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

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Barber: The Complete Solo Piano Music / John Browning
Nimbus Jan 2009
CD
$16.99

Macdowell, E.: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2
Centaur Records Feb 1988
CD
$18.99

Fišer: Complete Piano Sonatas

Grand Piano

$19.99 Oct 13, 2017

Lubox Fiser was one of the most influential and versatile Czech composers of the twentieth century, with a prolific and impressive body of work for the stage, screen and concert hall. Fiser’s eight piano sonatas (of which the second is lost), were composed for the instrument described by the composer as ‘his greatest love of all.’ Retaining a special place in Fiser’s oeuvre, they became an intimate diary of his constantly evolving compositional style, from his student days and the neo-classical Sonata No. 1, through the experimental sonatas of the 1960s and 1970s, to the simplicity of melodic line and the immediate emotional impact of the final sonata, No. 8.

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Fišer: Complete Piano Sonatas
Grand Piano Oct 2017
CD
$19.99

Arnold: Symphony No 2, Etc / Handley, Royal Po

Conifer Records

$17.99 Oct 30, 2008

Malcolm Arnold has been a central figure in British musical life for fifty years, believing that ‘to be asked by a performer whose accomplishment one admires is the greatest incentive to write music’. His Symphony No. 2, for Charles Groves and his Bournemouth Orchestra, and Concerto for Two Pianos, for Phyllis Sellick and Cyril Smith, both reflect this, and in Handley’s performances they are certainly colourful...
Performance: **** Sound: *****

-- Terry Barfoot, BBC Music Magazine

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Arnold: Symphony No 2, Etc / Handley, Royal Po
Conifer Records Oct 2008
CD
$17.99

Brahms, J.: Clarinet Sonata No. 2 / Milhaud, D.: 4 Visages /
Coviello Jan 2011
CD
$20.99

Busoni: Sonate per violino e pianoforte

Tactus

$21.99 Jan 19, 2024

Ferruccio Busoni (Empoli 1866 – Berlin 1924) died the same year as Puccini and was born when Puccini was a child, yet he was way more than an opera composer. While he lived several years in Trieste and some time in Bologna, he mainly lived abroad and spent the second half of his life in Berlin. Way more than a composer, he was a wide-ranging artist and musician, an acclaimed concert pianist and sought-after piano teacher, a learned reviser of piano music, and the author of many and varied pieces. Busoni was also an aesthete, an intellectual, a music reformer, and author of texts on musical topics. A child prodigy, he wrote the Symphonische Suite for orchestra at the age of 17.
Nicola Bignami and Lucija Majstorovic brilliantly face the arduous task of performing the two monumental and demanding sonatas for violin and piano that the composer wrote at twenty-four (first sonata) and at thirty-two (second sonata), in which the equal and dialogical relationship between the two instruments combines with a wealth of invention with respect for the great tradition.

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Busoni: Sonate per violino e pianoforte
Tactus Jan 2024
CD
$21.99

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 - Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto / Korsantia, Stuttgart Philharmonic

Haenssler Classic

$20.99 Jan 15, 2021

"This is a thrilling performance, which, like the Tchaikovsky Symphony, shows the indisputably high level of the Stuttgart Philharmonic." (Pizzicato LU) “The Stuttgart Philharmonic, founded in 1924, is in its 6th year under the busy Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger. His regular work at almost all of the leading opera houses in the world makes his approach to the melodies of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff just about perfect." (American Record Guide) The present album is a showstopping production of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony paired with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The featured soloist in the concerto is Alexander Korsantia, one of the leading pianists of our time. He has been praised for “piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist.” (Calgary Sun). His recordings of works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Copland have won multiple awards.

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Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 - Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto / Korsantia, Stuttgart Philharmonic
Haenssler Classic Jan 2021
CD
$20.99

Symphony 2, Academic Festival
Kontrapunkt Jun 1992
CD
$22.99

Szymanowski: Symphonies No 2 & 4 / Gardner

Chandos

$10.99 ~~$21.99~~ Save 50% Jan 29, 2013

This recording of orchestral works by Karol Szymanowski form part of the Polish Music series on Chandos, and is performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Edward Gardner. These performers have impressed in their Lutoslawski survey, which is part of the same series; in a review of volume 1, Gramophone described them as a veritable ‘dream team’.

Symphony No. 2 by Szymanowski is a work of great power and ingenuity, with many passionate and varied contrasts in its use of solo instruments. Composed in 1909 – 10, it is widely considered the greatest orchestral work of the composer’s early period, not to mention one of the most important Polish symphonic compositions to date. Szymanowski himself thought very highly of it, and in August 1911 wrote in a letter to his fellow Polish composer Zdzis?aw Jachimecki: ‘How happy I am that this Symphony impressed you as I had wanted. I will frankly admit that I feel somewhat proud about its value. In some miraculous way I have managed during my work on it to resist all those garish phantoms which seduce “young and inexperienced” artists and to produce pure and uncompromising beauty in the way I personally understand it.’

The internationally acclaimed pianist Louis Lortie joins the orchestra and conductor in Symphony No. 4 of 1932, which the composer subtitled ‘Symphonie concertante’ in recognition of the near-soloistic role played by the pianist. Whereas Szymanowski’s early and middle works clearly reflect Wagner, Strauss, and Scriabin, this work is strongly influenced by Prokofiev, particularly in the finale, an agitated and daring movement reminiscent of the Russian composer’s Piano Concerto No. 3, composed about a decade earlier.

Written in 1904 – 05 in a style recalling Wagner and Strauss, the Concert Overture is characterised by enormous expressiveness and gusto in the way it handles the expanding themes. Szymanowski inscribed the original score with part of the poem Wite? W?ast by his friend Tadeusz Mici?ski: ‘I will not play you sad songs, O Shades! but will give you a triumph proud and fierce…’. This vivid imagery is perfectly in keeping with the music’s exuberant and vivacious character.

- Chandos

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Szymanowski: Symphonies No 2 & 4 / Gardner
Chandos Jan 2013
CD
~~$21.99~~ $10.99

Beethoven: Concertos Nos. 2 & 3; Egmont Overture, Vol. 2
AMC Amchara Classical Sep 2024
CD
$7.99

Hypersuites Reloaded

Neue Meister

Vinyl

$19.99 Nov 21, 2025

Pianist and composer Marina Baranova released her album Hypersuites on Berlin Classics in August 2016. "My Hypersuites are acoustic remixes of baroque masters," says the artist. For her project, she selected compositions by four Baroque composers - Couperin, J. S. Bach, Rameau and Handel - and combined individual pieces by these composers to create four suites of her own. The result of this exploration is a new Gesamtkunstwerk, a modern "mixed tape": Hypersuites. Baroque music of the 21st century. For Hypersuites, recorded on a modern Steinway grand piano in the Berlin Teldex studio, Marina Baranova has invited a special guest: Composer and pianist Hauschka created a remix of Rameau's La Poule. The result is a piece that mirrors baroque and electronic music. What if this idea is taken a step further? Marina Baranova is a classical concert pianist who has her musical roots not only in classical music but also in jazz. However, her interests go much further. The idea for Hypersuites came to her during a DJ session. She thought that scratches are basically the modern form of baroque musical embellishments. So nothing could be more obvious than to give the Hypersuites another musical color: Electronic arrangements of Baranova's version for solo instrument. How do DJs, contemporary composers and musicians interpret baroque music? How modern is baroque music, and how can it be transferred into the present day? Not just remixes, but an independent piece of music should be created, with an individual signature without any specifications or restrictions. Who takes part? Hauschka created a 6-minute version of Rameau's La Poule for Hypersuites Reloaded. The musician is known for his "prepared piano" and film scores, but new projects are also leading him more towards classical music with orchestras and chamber ensembles. The composers, producers and musicians John Kameel Farah, Damian Marhulets, Humboldt, Kostia Rapoport, Jannis Block, Anton Berman and Raz Ohara can also be heard with their own remixes. Marina has also created her own remix, which is not just a remix, but offers yet another unique approach to Bach's Siciliano.

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Hypersuites Reloaded
Neue Meister Nov 2025
Vinyl
$19.99

Mix & Match

#1 PIANO ALBUM / VARIOUS

DECCA

$14.99 Nov 12, 2002

More than 2 *1/2* hours of piano masterpieces in one low-priced, 2-CD set: nocturnes, mazurkas, polonaises and waltzes by Chopin; Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 ; Beethoven's Fur Elise and Adagio from Moonlight Sonata ; preludes by Rachmaninoff, plus Brahms, Debussy, Gershwin and more, played by Barenboim, Arrau, Brendel and many other masters!

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#1 PIANO ALBUM / VARIOUS
DECCA Nov 2002
CD
$14.99

Schulhoff: Piano Works Vol 2 / Caroline Weichert

Grand Piano

$9.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 50% Jun 25, 2013

Schulhoff was one of many composers who took up the challenge to embrace jazz and to incorporate it into their music. He was one of the most successful at writing works that were no mere pastiches but genuinely jazz-inspired - ones that could just as easily have come from the pens of people like Scott Joplin or Billy Mayerl.

Fünf Pittoresken (Five Pictures) date from as far back as 1919 and are remarkable for their wit and experimental nature. The first two entitled Foxtrott and Ragtime ‘do exactly what it says on the tin’ and are clearly influenced by Scott Joplin whose Maple Leaf Rag had been such a hit in the early years of the twentieth century. That they were penned by a white Jewish Central European is surprising enough but they are convincing in their recreation of true jazz rhythms that one would normally ascribe solely to a black composer such as Joplin.

One must surely conclude that Schulhoff had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he ‘created’ the third of these pictures since it is entitled In futurum. It consists of 85 seconds of total silence which anticipates John Cage’s notorious 4'33" (by 33 years) in which a pianist sits at the piano with orchestra and no-one does anything for that precise length of time. Cage, a pioneer in indeterminacy in music, claimed that its motivation was an attempt to demonstrate that there are sounds to be heard in a concert hall full of audience even when no music is played. It will be different each time the ‘work’ is ‘performed’ with different ambient sounds occurring as well as audience breathing and the odd cough and even, perhaps, extraneous sounds from outside the building. Schulhoff’s ‘work’ may also ‘benefit’ from the same effect in a similar venue but with the technical expertise that comes into play in the recording studio such possibilities are lost. Before I read the booklet I thought I had received a rogue copy and contacted the distributors who tried 6 copies themselves before contacting the manufacturer and label owner who told them that it was not a fault. Note to self: when in doubt read the booklet first! ‘Normal service was resumed’ for Pictures 4 and 5 which were just as refreshingly jazzy as the first two.

The Piano Sonata No.2 is in a different league owing more to the French school of Ravel than to the jazzmen of the USA. A wonderfully restrained and understated first movement gives way to a mercurial second in scherzo form. The third is beautifully appealing and gentle “exuding an air of calm contentment” as the booklet notes so aptly put it. The sonata closes with a fourth movement that once again recalls Ravel and shows that Schulhoff was someone whose writing is of equal interest to that of the great French composer.

The two piano pieces that follow were composed in 1936 when the threat of Nazism was clear. The first is entitled Optimistic Composition while the second is entitled The Czech Workers and presents a militant stance that must surely be read as a challenge to the threat from the West. Schulhoff, as a communist, hoped that this threat would be defeated by the combined might of working people everywhere.

Schulhoff’s Musik für Klavier in vier teilen dating from 1920 takes us back to the days when the influence of jazz in his music was at its strongest. While this work is not overtly as jazzy as the Five Pictures that opened the disc its influence can be detected nevertheless. The second movement which is in the form of a lengthy set of ten variations is particularly affecting.

The last work on the disc is Esquisses de Jazz which was written in 1927. It is Schulhoff’s most well known work and though its subtitle is Six pièces faciles pour piano the word facile translates as easy since there is nothing ‘facile’ about it. These are piano pieces heavily influenced by jazz though they do not attempt to be jazz pieces per se; they are seen through a jazz prism while retaining a distinctly Schulhoff stamp of innovation. The one entitled Charleston is a particular case in point.

In recent years a lot more of Schulhoff’s works have been appearing on disc and about time too for they increasingly reveal a huge talent across a wide range of compositions that includes six completed symphonies. It is all the more sad to realise what could have been created subsequently had he not been cruelly arrested and sent to a concentration camp in Bavaria. There he is believed to have died from TB at the early age of 48.

This is the second disc of Schulhoff’s piano works to appear on the Grand Piano label both played by Caroline Weichert. Her deft touch and sympathetic approach enables the music to weave its spell. She has also released another disc of Grainger’s piano music for the label and previous releases on the Koch Schwann label show that she prefers to concentrate on lesser-known composers. I find this refreshing since there remains so much wonderful music to be discovered. We need people like her to help in that process.

This is a fascinating disc of music that is rarely heard and when as lovingly played as it is here deserves a wide listenership.

-- Steve Arloff, MusicWeb International

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Schulhoff: Piano Works Vol 2 / Caroline Weichert
Grand Piano Jun 2013
CD
~~$19.99~~ $9.99

SOLOS & DUETS

SACKVILLE RECORDS

$22.94 Jun 21, 2005

This 2-CD collection brings together three LPs from the 1970s which illustrate superbly the attributes of Jay McShann's piano stylings. "Tuxedo Junction," the title track, salutes Erskine Hawkins. Also recalled are Sir Charles Thompson and Illinois Jacquet ("Robbins Nest"), Mary Lou Williams ("Froggie Bottom"), Don Redman ("Gee Baby Ain't I Good to You") and Duke Ellington ("Do Nothing Until You Hear from Me"). This collection includes two previously unreleased vocal performances by Jay McShann of "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" and "Keep Your Hands Off Her."

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SOLOS & DUETS
SACKVILLE RECORDS Jun 2005
CD
$22.94

Time and Gravity

SUPREME CLASSICS

SACD

$21.99 Oct 16, 2026

With her debut album Time and Gravity, Georgian pianist Irma Gigani turns to Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas Nos. 2, 4, and 8. For the artist, time and gravity serve as metaphors for the human condition: time as an unstoppable flow between memory, hope, and the present moment; gravity as the invisible force of attraction and energy. In Prokofiev's richly layered musical language, she finds the ideal space to explore these ideas-balancing personal expression with the universal themes of human existence, between freedom and constraint, love and pain, beauty and the abyss. Born in Tbilisi in 1996, Irma Gigani is regarded as one of the most remarkable pianists of her generation. Already as a child, she won numerous international competitions and appeared as a soloist with renowned orchestras throughout Europe and Israel. Her concert engagements have taken her to France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Romania, and beyond. She has performed at prestigious venues including the Musikverein in Vienna, the Salle Cortot in Paris, and-performing Bach's Goldberg Variations-the Konzerthaus Berlin, Vatican City in Rome, and many others.

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Time and Gravity
SUPREME CLASSICS Oct 2026
SACD
$21.99

GHIBLI JAZZ 2

P-VINE

Vinyl

$53.66 Feb 13, 2026

You'd be forgiven for not knowing about these Studio Ghibli commissioned jazz reworkings of much-loved classic soundtracks with the three-piece All That Jazz being one of Japan's best kept secrets until now. Originally put together by the power-house animation studio for a series of jazzed-up covers, the group took off with their simple yet moving set-up of piano, bass and drums, and afterwards went on to do another record of anime classics. Sprinkled with complementary instruments, the project is tied together by the soothing vocals of Yukiko Kuwahara. On this second record, you can find the main theme of Spirited Away, three cuts from My Neighbour Totoro, the theme to the more recently appraised Only Yesterday and carefully curated tracks.

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GHIBLI JAZZ 2
P-VINE Feb 2026
Vinyl
$53.66