South African-born, London resident Daniel-Ben Pienaar is a completest. Recent surveys, both on the concert platform and in the recording studio, include Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Chopin's Complete Waltzes, Schubert's Complete Sonatas, and the complete keyboard works by Orlando Gibbons. He arrives on the Avie label with another major project in tow: the complete Piano Sonatas by Mozart.
An active recitalist, chamber musician and professor at the Royal Academy of Music, Pienaar has a number of critically acclaimed independent releases under his belt, but this recording represents and uncommon synergy between artist, repertoire and production values. In Gramophone Award-winning producer Jonathan Freeman-Atwood, Pienaar found a special simpatico which he found "profoundly enabling", resulting in a creative recording process specific in relation to the music in hand. Pienaar presents the works chronologically over five CDs, illustrating Mozart's compositional trajectory which represents all of the major stylistic and emotional shifts in his mature career, with the earliest dating from his twentieth year, through his Viennese period, and the final works which were written towards the end of his all too brief life.
Critical acclaim: "... no doubt that this South African-born pianist is a thinking virtuoso ... In the company of such contrasting practitioners as Edwin Fischer, Samuel Feinberg, Sviatoslav Richter and Glenn Gould, he seems determined to leave his own mark" - BBC Music Magazine
"Daniel-Ben Pienaar's performances are quite simply stunning. The instrument he plays matters much less than his musicianship, which is evident at every turn." - Gramophone
"A kaleidoscope of colours and textures in performances that combined the dramatic with the ethereal, the monumental with the intimate" - International Piano summary South African-born, London resident Daniel-Ben Pienaar makes his Avie debut with this beautifully recorded and ambitious project: the complete Piano Sonatas of Mozart.
The present album constitutes a juxtaposition of works of two musical families: the greatest one, without which it would be hard to imagine the history of modern music - the Bach family - and the Podbielski family, of Polish origin, who have almost been completely forgotten and pushed to the margin of consciousness. Four unique personalities emerge from this compilation - each immersed in their own time and operating with their individual expression style. The common denominator of the works presented on the album is a unique instrument, considered to be perfect in the times of Johann Sebastian Bach - the viola da gamba. The listener will hear it together with the harpsichord in the interpretation of a marriage of musicians specializing in Early Music performance - Krzysztof and Anna Firlus.
In the light of his later music, it is by no means difficult to imagine Domenico Scarlatti strolling under the Moorish arcades of the Alcazar or listening at night in the streets of Seville to the intoxicating rhythms of castanets and the half oriental melodies of Andalusian chant. To them Saracen of his Sicilian ancestry and Neapolitan childhood must have responded. (Ralph Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti)
10 months after the highly successful debut CD (KPT 32185 “Prokofiev:Violin Sonatas and Five Melodies”) Armenia’s prodigious young talent Nikolai Madojan visited Denmark again to record Grieg’s sonatas with veteran Elisabeth Westenholz.
The Gramophone wrote on Madojan/Westenholz duo’s “Prokofiev” recording in comparison with the Perlman/Ashkenazy recording, “Nikolai ... has a natural feeling...his is the more thought-provoking...Westenholz refreshingly tender-hearted and imaginative. ..Kontrapunkt’s CD is a good one and will not disappoint those who are attracted by the programme...”
This exceptional double album stands as a landmark historically informed recording of Handel's solo sonatas, uniting pioneering scholarship, extraordinary period-instrument artistry, and superb audiophile sound in one of the most compelling chamber music portraits of the Baroque era. The Ganassi Consort, joined by guest violinist Anne Rohrig, illuminate the astonishing breadth of Handel's imagination across four decades of his creative life, revealing music of remarkable elegance, invention, and emotional depth.
