Narrow my search:
From
HI-RES$12.36$24.71(50%)
CD$9.89$19.77(50%)
Schubert: Waltzes & Ecossaises
Didier Castell-Jacomin
Classical - Released October 13, 2023 | Naxos
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$15.56
CD$12.45
Schubert: Lieder with Orchestra
Munich Radio Orchestra
Classical - Released October 6, 2023 | BR-Klassik
Hi-Res
Booklets
One might react to this album with initial annoyance and ask whether it is really necessary to hear orchestrated versions of Schubert's supremely pianistic songs. It may come as a surprise, then, to find that most of these Lieder with Orchestra were arranged by great composers. They include Benjamin Britten, Jacques Offenbach, and Max Reger, who took on the job because, he said, he hated to hear a piano-accompanied song on an orchestral program. Perhaps the most surprising name to find is that of Anton Webern, but his arrangements are not the minimal, pointillistic things one might expect; he wrote these arrangements as a way of studying Schubert's music, and they are quite straightforward. Indeed, it is somewhat difficult to distinguish the arrangers simply by listening to the music; Schubert's melodic lines tend to suggest distinctive solutions. Perhaps Reger's are a bit more lush than the others, although his version of Erlkönig, D. 328, is one of the few numbers here that just doesn't work (there is no way to replicate the percussive quality of the accompaniment). As for the performances as such, Benjamin Appl is clearly an important rising baritone, and he has a wonderful natural quality in Schubert. An oddball release like this might seem an unusual choice for a singer in early career, but he contributes his own notes, and he seems to have undertaken the project out of genuine enthusiasm for the material. At the very least, he has brought some intriguing pieces out of the archives and given them highly listenable performances. The Munich Radio Orchestra, under the young Oscar Jockel, is suitably restrained and keeps out of Appl's way. This release made classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$31.79
CD$24.59
Schubert: Schwanengesang & String Quintet
Julian Prégardien
Classical - Released September 10, 2021 | Alpha Classics
Hi-Res
Booklet
Here are two works composed by Schubert at the very end of his short life. Schwanengesang (Swansong) was written in Vienna in the autumn of 1828. He died on 19 November at the age of thirty-one, and Die Taubenpost (Pigeon post), which closes the collection, is said to be his very last composition. The fourteen songs, by turns light-hearted, sombre and melancholy, are settings of poems by Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl. In the summer of the same year he composed his String Quintet in C major, scored for two cellos, which was not premiered until 1850, at the Vienna Musikverein. The power and orchestral dimensions of the work make it a pinnacle of nineteenth-century chamber music. We could not have dreamt of a finer line-up of musicians to record these two Schubert monuments. Fanny Mendelssohn’s Schwanenlied (also to words by Heinrich Heine) completes the programme, along with Felix Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words No. 1 (for solo piano), composed a year after Schubert’s death and Schubert’s own setting of an unrelated Schwanengesang (D. 744, on a poem by Johann Senn). © Alpha Classics
From
CD$14.39
Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise & Schwanengesang
Nathalie Stutzmann
Classical - Released November 10, 2014 | Erato - Warner Classics
Booklet
Distinctions
4F de Télérama
From
CD$5.99
Festival International de Piano de La Roque d'Anthéron: 36e édition
Zhu Xiao-Mei
Classical - Released July 15, 2016 | Mirare
Booklet
From
CD$12.45
Tcherepnin: Prelude to "La princesse lointaine", Op. 4 & Narcisse et Echo, Op. 40
Bamberger Symphoniker
Classical - Released June 5, 2020 | CPO
Booklet
Distinctions
Diapason d'or
It's a real godsend to be able to discover the ballet Narcissus and Echo by Nicolaï Tcherepnine, an all-too-forgotten composer today. Yet he is one of the young Russians, such as Rachmaninov, Glazunov, Medtner or Taneïev, who succeeded their great elders in the Group of Five and Tchaikovsky. He inherited an exceptional orchestral skill from his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, before teaching himself at the St Petersburg Conservatory where he had Sergei Prokofiev as a student.Appointed as a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre before the October Revolution, Nicolaï Tcherepnine conducted the inaugural season of the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909. It was for Serge de Diaghilev that he composed his ballet Narcissus and Echo, which was hastily premiered in 1911 in place of Daphnis and Chloe, whose composition Ravel had not finished in time. Danced by Nijinsky in a choreography by Fokine and the Bakst sets planned for Daphnis, the work seemed boring to the Parisian public. It was an unjust judgment, since this sparkling score deserves much more than to simply be forgotten.Dance générale, Bacchanal in a dreamy Greece, here we are in the same universe as Ravel, one adorned with a colourful and magical orchestration, and whose use of a choir further reinforces - in a rather disturbing way - its closeness to Ravel's future ballet. It was certainly a kind of stagnation that may have confused the audience, accustomed at the time to the wild rhythms of Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and the young Stravinsky.The beautiful recording of Łukasz Borowicz is a timely reminder of the music of this great Russian composer who lived in Paris where he died in 1945, leaving behind a large number of stage compositions (operas and ballets), symphonic music, chamber music, vocal works and piano works. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
CD$19.77
Piano Music - Schumann, R. / Kabalevsky, D. / Schubert, F. / Bartok , B. (Such Stuff As Dreams - Lullaby Album for Children and Adults)
Carol Rosenberger
Classical - Released September 30, 1997 | Delos
From
CD$60.09
Martha Argerich - Solo Works & Works for Piano Duo
Martha Argerich
Classical - Released January 1, 1983 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
From
HI-RES$16.59
CD$14.39
Schubert : Trout Quintet, Waltzes & Ländler
Thymos Quartet
Chamber Music - Released May 15, 2020 | Avie Records
Hi-Res
Booklet
Four years passed between the recording of Schubert's Quintet in A major and its release on record to coincide with the 80th birthday of pianist Christoph Eschenbach. During those four years, the musicians sought to complete the program of this album to make the timing perfect. In addition to the very lively Truite, we find a few waltzes arranged for string quartet by Olivier Dejours and a bouquet of Ländler played on the piano by Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, friend and regular partner of the Thymos Quartet. The essence of the program is therefore this Truite played in such a friendly way, with a fresh simplicity. It is the ideal vision of one of the few perfectly happy and tender works by Schubert, who seems to have forgotten his deep melancholy in the summer of 1819, at least for a while. The Thymos Quartet was formed in 2003 when four musicians from the Paris and Lyon Conservatories met, all members of the Orchestre de Paris directed at the time by Christoph Eschenbach, who became their mentor. They had already recorded Dvořák’s Quintet n° 2 with piano together in 2011. The Thymos performed in France and Europe before conquering the United States, China, Korea and Japan. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
CD$19.76
Grigory Sokolov Plays Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev
Grigory Sokolov
Classical - Released October 16, 2014 | JSC Firma Melodiya
Paraphrases & Transcriptions
Jorge Bolet
Classical - Released January 1, 1970 | Ensayo
Distinctions
4 étoiles du Monde de la Musique
Download not available
From
HI-RES$7.78$15.56(50%)
CD$6.23$12.45(50%)
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonatas Nos. 5, 7a, 11 and 12 (Fragments)
Gottlieb Wallisch
Classical - Released March 29, 2004 | Naxos
Hi-Res
Booklet
Among his most imaginative works, Schubert's fragmentary piano sonatas offer insights into his struggles with form and his experiments with tonality, preoccupations that led to great innovations in his final masterpieces. Composed between 1817 and 1823, the 12 unfinished sonatas reveal the most striking ideas and expressions, though many proved too difficult to develop satisfactorily; or, in other cases, the sonatas are incomplete because pages or whole movements are missing. The Sonata No. 5 in A flat major, D. 557, is the most complete and is included here because its unusual ending in E flat suggests an unwritten fourth movement. Written in 1817, the Sonata No. 7a in D flat major, D. 567, is a virtuoso piece Schubert wished to publish. However, the lost last page puts this substantial work among the fragments. The Sonata No. 11 in C major, D. 613/612, and the Sonata No. 12 in F minor, D. 625/505, are true fragments, with significant lacunae and without middle movements. Aside from the insertions of D. 612 and D. 505, Gottlieb Wallisch plays the sonatas as they appear in the manuscripts, without the completions added by others, and stops playing where Schubert halted. Wallisch's performances are sensitive, clean, and stylistically appropriate, and Naxos provides splendid sound throughout.© TiVo
From
CD$13.09
Schubert: 38 Walzes, Ländler and Ecossaises, D. 145 - 6 German Dances, D. 970 - 12 Gräzer Waltzer, D. 924 - 12 German Dances, D. 790 “Ländler” - 8 Ecossaises, D. 735 - 17 Ländler, D. 366
Trudelies Leonhardt
Classical - Released July 12, 2002 | Cascavelle
From
HI-RES$21.09
CD$18.09
Fauré: Nocturnes & Barcarolles
Marc-André Hamelin
Classical - Released September 1, 2023 | Hyperion
Hi-Res
Booklet
Distinctions
Diapason d'or
The virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin isn't the first pianist one would think of when it comes to Fauré's music, but he has recorded all kinds of things, even ragtime, and as it happens, he does quite well with the dense miniatures heard on this album. Fauré's Nocturnes are at some level connected to Chopin's but are quite different, with murky chromaticism, especially in the later ones, setting the night atmosphere. Fauré is thought of as a musical conservative, but one would hardly know it from the pieces here that stubbornly refuse to settle on a tonal center. The counterpoint is complex, and a successful performance is one that untangles it. There isn't big, pianistic virtuosity here, but Hamelin's ability to balance Fauré's registers is virtuosic in its own way. The Barcarolles, a genre not much pursued by other composers but for Fauré seeming to allow rays of Venetian sunshine into his rather closed-in French world, are lighter but basically cut from the same cloth. Things lighten up with the final Dolly Suite, Op. 56, where Hamelin performs with his wife, Cathy Fuller. (For those wondering, neither Mi-a-ou nor the Kitty-valse has anything to do with cats.) Although Hyperion's church sound is not idiomatic, it does not damage the remarkable clarity in what is a significant entry in the Fauré discography, one that landed on classical best-seller lists in the late summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$15.56
CD$12.45
Live from The Cliburn - Liszt: Transcendental Etudes
Yunchan Lim
Classical - Released July 7, 2023 | Steinway and Sons
Hi-Res
Booklet
The teenage pianist Yunchan Lim has gotten reams (or gigabytes) of good press, yet listeners may have any number of reasons for being skeptical. Lim's K-pop looks are not everyone's cup of tea, and on his debut album, while showing plenty of promise, he seemed oddly reluctant to take the spotlight. Any doubts, however, will be put to rest by Lim's performances, recorded here, in his winning career in the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth, Texas. They are astonishing. Competition performances often have a well-practiced, safe quality, but not this one; Lim goes out onto the edge and stays there. Sample at will, and note that he tends to give quieter passages an almost harsh quality; his method is to raise the tension, which he knows he can dissipate in brilliant, tumultuous passagework. What's more, he accomplishes these utterly distinctive performances in Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, often-recorded works that are commonplace in the competition repertory. The title of this collection is slightly mistranslated from its French original, Études d'exécution transcendante ("Etudes of Transcendental Execution"). The original points up the degree to which, for all the storm and thunder, these are true etudes, posing specific technical problems for the player, and Lim sets the rigorous and the fantastic elements against each other brilliantly. One need only add that Steinway's live sound is superlative. Everything one has heard is true, and this album made classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2022.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$18.09
CD$15.69
Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan
Rock - Released May 16, 1966 | Columbia
Hi-Res
Distinctions
The Qobuz Ideal Discography
Reference album, rock monument, pop masterpiece.
From
HI-RES$22.79
CD$19.59
Debussy: Études & Pour le piano
Steven Osborne
Solo Piano - Released November 3, 2023 | Hyperion
Hi-Res
Booklet
Distinctions
Gramophone: Recording of the Month
From
HI-RES$35.09
CD$30.09
Hamelin: New Piano Works
Marc-André Hamelin
Classical - Released February 2, 2024 | Hyperion
Hi-Res
Booklet
Marc-André Hamelin, by general acclaim, one of the great virtuosos of the day, here attempts to recapture the compositional as well as technical spirit of the pianistic giants of the past. Liszt, of course, was a pianist-composer, but he was not the only one. Hamelin issued an album of his own etudes in 2010, but in these "New Piano Works," mostly composed during the 2010s, he is even more adventurous. Many of these works are variations of one kind or another, and Hamelin starts off with his own Variations on a Theme of Paganini, previously essayed by Liszt, Rachmaninov, and several others. These variations introduce not only the usual high level of virtuosity but also the eclectic range of references in most of these works; he quotes Rachmaninov's set and also alludes to Alkan, Chopin, Brahms, and others. The variation form is ideal for Hamelin's project, for he can drop in quotations and allusions the same as a 19th century virtuoso would. His Variations diabellique sur des thèmes de Beethoven is a wickedly humorous exegesis on Beethoven's Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120. There are hints of jazz in some of Hamelin's variations, and these flower fully in the Suite à l'ancienne, which annotator Francis Pott proposes as a tribute to the jazz-classical fusionist Nikolai Kapustin; he composed a similar Suite in the Old Style. Hamelin concludes with an explosive Toccata on l'Homme Armé, the medieval tune that served as the basis for numerous Renaissance masses. So Hamelin's range of references is wide, but it is never random, and the listener who missed the subtler allusions will still enjoy the music. This is a bold, highly entertaining re-creation of the role of the classic virtuoso, idiomatically and clearly recorded at London's Henry Wood Hall. This release made classical best-seller lists in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$22.48$24.98(10%)
CD$17.98$19.98(10%)
Liszt: Piano Sonata & Transcendental Etudes
Francesco Piemontesi
Solo Piano - Released September 1, 2023 | PentaTone
Hi-Res
Booklet
To hear pianist Francesco Piemontesi tell it, he waited until middle age to attempt the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, even though these works are often programmed by hotshot young pianists intent on displaying their technical mastery. What Piemontesi gets is that Liszt's most difficult works have technical depths that are still achieved by only a few. A piece like "Scarbo," from Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, was at the edge of the technically possible when it was written, but now any competent conservatory graduate can play it. The Transcendental Etudes and the Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor are different. A good performance is quite possible, but great ones that evoke the spell in which Liszt held his audiences are rarer. The latter is what the music gets here from Piemontesi. He is strong throughout, but it is in the dense virtuosic passages, with sheets of sound issuing from his piano, unfortunately unidentified in the booklet, that leave the listener amazed. Sample "Mazeppa" from the Etudes or the fugal treatment of the main sonata material for an idea; those sheets of sound never lose their individual notes. Piemontesi is hardly less effective in the slower passages, which have a kind of majesty. He records on home ground at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano, and it is an appropriate venue for his remarkable achievement.© James Manheim /TiVo
Suppose you have a more precise idea of what you want. If you are searching for the album "Bad" by Michael Jackson, type michael jackson bad. The album in question will be displayed at the top, as it is the most relevant.
By default, search results are sorted in order of relevance. The drop-down menu to the right of "Sort by" allows you to display the results in the desired order.