Dinara Klinton PROKOFIEV Complete Piano Sonatas

 

COMPLETE PIANO SONATAS

 

Marcos Madrigal GUASTAVINO Piano Music

 

PIANO MUSIC

 

Andrey Gugnin LISZT Études d'exécution transcendante

A famously demanding summit of the Romantic piano literature performed by a Russian artist of prodigious talents.
Having gained the Gold Medal and the Audience Award at the XVI International Gina Bachauer Piano Competition in 2014, Andrey Gugnin (b.1987) is in huge demand as both a concert and recording artist. Following that particular competition success (one of many, including the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2016), Gugnin recorded Pictures at an Exhibition, which has become a tour de force for Gugnin on recent tours of Europe, America and Asia.
Glenn Gould, Emil Gilels and Sergei Rachmaninov are Gugnin’s ‘piano heroes’: the last two noted exponents of Franz Liszt in their own right, and among the composer’s vast output, still only a fraction of which is generally known, the Transcendental Etudes are the pre-eminent works to embody the contradictions and contrasts at the heart of the man and his music: ‘transcendent’ both in terms of the demands they make upon the performer and yet, at points, in their spiritual aspirations.
‘Half Franciscan, half gypsy’ was Liszt’s own description of himself, not entirely ironic, and it chimes with the extraordinary variety of these studies, encapsulated by the expressive distance between the last two, the visionary ‘Harmonies du soir’ and the unstoppable force of ‘Chasse-Neige’: ‘a sublime and steady fall of snow which gradually buries landscape and people’ according to Ferruccio Busoni. In Andrey Gugnin these studies find a pianist with both the technique and the sensibility to encompass the precipitous leaps of ‘Wilde Jagd’ and the Mendelssohnian eye for landscape in ‘Paysage’.
Andrey Gugnin is one of the most exciting pianists of the younger Russian generation. A pupil of Lev Naumov and the legendary Vera Gornostayeva at the Moscow Conservatory he participated in several international competitions: he is first prize Winner of the Sidney Piano Competition 2016, Gold Medal of the Gina Bachauer Competition 2014 and 2-nd prize of the Vienna Beethoven Competition in 2013. He played in important Festivals like Verbier and Ruhr Klavier, he played with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and all the Russian orchestras with conductors like Valery Gergiev and others.
Andrey Gugnin regularly plays the complete set of Liszt’s notoriously difficult Études d’exécution transcendante in public. His performance has a sweeping vision, a grand arch of tension and relaxation, of the wild and furious and of the serene and contemplative.

Yuan Sheng TCHAIKOVSKY The Seasons

Yuan Sheng has a deep understanding and command of harpsichord and early pianos that has resulted in many well-received historically informed performances and recordings. In reviewing his all-Beethoven recital on an 1805 Kathönig piano, the Boston Intelligencer remarked that ‘Sheng had absorbed this music so thoroughly that a listener might easily have imagined the composer at the keyboard.’ 

Sheng made his debut on Piano Classics with a 3CD album of Chopin (the complete Nocturnes, Preludes, Ballades and Impromptus, PCL0049) played on an 1845 Pleyel. For this new recording of Tchaikovsky’s evergreen musical diary, he has returned to the reliable refinements of a modern Steinway, yet the nuances of his performance reflect concerns to grasp and convey the styles of phrasing and articulation that would have been second nature to Tchaikovsky. 

As a cycle of salon pieces, The Seasons has never ceased to afford pleasure both to listeners and to amateur pianists since it was first published in 1885, though Tchaikovsky had compiled its contents over several years. It is here complemented by works dating from different periods of Tchaikovsky’s career, similarly undemanding in style: the very early Romance (1868) and two Morceaux (1871-2) and the much later Dumka (1886), composed for his Parisian publisher Félix Mackar as a ‘rhapsody’. 

In 1875 Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write a series of piano pieces for the St. Petersburg musical magazine Nuvellist, each piece to be published in the monthly issue. Although Tchaikovsky frequently composed on commission (he sometimes described it casually as “tossing musical pancakes") he took it seriously and he even warmed to the task during composing. His 12 compositions are called “The Seasons” and describe each individual month of the year, either by mood or by a particular occasion or activity (January: By the Hearth, February: Carnival, July: Song of the Reaper etc). the music is relatively simple (no octaves thundering like in his 1rst piano concerto), affectionate, intimate and often hauntingly beautiful: a series of 12 musical gems!
In addition to the cycle The Seasons Yuan Sheng recorded some smaller piano pieces by Tchaikovsky, including the ever popular Dumka. 

Zlata Cochieva RACHMANINOFF Études-Tableaux

Zlata about her new album: For my third album for Piano Classics I chose the complete Etudes-tableaux by Rachmaninoff, music close to my heart. I always feel immensely fortunate to perform these masterpieces of a composer whom I wholeheartedly adore. Rachmaninoff composed most of his works, including the Etudestableaux, at his family estate in Ivanovka, 600 km south of Moscow he returned there each summer for more than twenty years, a habit only put to an end by his emigration in 1917. I visited his house there this August to absorb its special atmosphere, and to experience the inspiration and magical spirit which must have made this incredibly peaceful land such a joy and place of refuge for him. It is a great privilege to be able to experience these worlds that the Tableaux present, full of emotional poetry, romantic beauty, painful tragedy, darkness and light, and a boundless love for Russia. Zlata Chochievas discography includes two CDs with ""Piano Classics"" Label. Her recording of Rachmaninovs Variation on a Theme of Chopin and First Sonata received outstanding reviews in several prestigious classical music magazines including ""Gramophone"", ""Fono Forum"" (5 star review) and ""Piano News"". Her recent disc of the complete Chopin Etudes with the same label has been nominated for the ""The German Record Critics Award"" (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik) and was selected as Editors Choice in Gramophone.

Anna Fedorova / Benedict Kloeckner RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto 2 - Cello Sonata

Anna Fedorova is one of the world's premier young pianists. From an early age, she demonstrated an innate musical maturity and astounding technical abilities. Her international concert career took off while she was only a child, and audiences around the world were stunned by the depth and power of her musical expression. Critics have praised Anna's signature “sweet modesty and wild expression,” which rendered listeners “completely taken by surprise, compelled and astonished.” In September 2013 Anna performed Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto at the opening of the season of Sunday Morning Concerts series at the Great hall of the Royal Concertgebouw. Within half a year, the recording of this concert received over 1,000,000 views on YouTube and was highly praised among renown musicians. 

Anna has claimed top prizes at numerous international piano competitions, including the International Rubinstein 'In Memoriam' piano competition, the Moscow International Frederick Chopin Competition for young pianists, the Lyon Piano Competition, and recently became recipient of the Verbier Festival Academy Award. She is also two-time laureate of the Dorothy MacKenzie Artist Recognition Scholarship Award at the International Keyboards Institute & Festival (New York, USA). A graduate of the Lysenko School of Music in Kyiv (studio of Borys Fedorov), Anna is currently a student of Norma Fisher at the Royal College of Music in London, where she in the recipient of the Big Give full tuition scholarship. Additionally, Anna studies at the prestigious Accademia Pianistica in Imola, Italy under professor Leonid Margarius. She has also received artistic guidance from world renowned pianists like Alfred Brendel, Menahem Pressler, and Andras Schiff.