Classical music listeners resort to ethnic and national generalizations too often. Some of the most insightful Beethoven interpreters were French, and there are plenty of classic non-Czech recordings of Dvorák. Yet there's something uniquely satisfying about this version of the much-recorded Slavonic Dances (both sets, Op. 46 and Op. 72), and the satisfaction has something to do with the all-Czech origins. Take for example the match between the superb sound, recorded in Prague's Rudolfinium hall, and the texture of Jirí Belohlávek's Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, an ensemble he has molded into his own. The orchestra doesn't produce a Vienna Philharmonic-like sheen, but rather a slightly gutsier sound that is reproduced to the hilt by Decca's engineers in this recording. Listen to this, and you'll be reminded of the Czech Philharmonic's glory days in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was one of the few institutions in the country not under grim Soviet control. Belohlávek thinks each of these dances through. He delivers crisp readings of the basic exposition of the dance rhythms, but the real fun comes as he develops the material. Each of these dances is like a little ternary symphonic movement, and that's the way the work should be done. Sample the Slavonic Dance in F major, Op. 46, No. 4, where the minuet theme evolves into a sensitive study of register. Belohlávek will get your foot tapping in pieces like the Slavonic Dance in G minor, Op. 46, No. 8, which with its mode mixture is almost a little study for the Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, to come. But it's in the small details that he and the musicians really shine. A superior Dvorák recording.© TiVo

Dvořák’s works for solo piano are in the main an unexplored landscape even for many a pianist and musicologist. This segment of his music lacks Chopin’s sway and finely nuanced emotionality, nor does it possess Liszt’s osten­tatious virtuosity. Just as he did in his entire oeuvre, in his piano works too Antonín Dvořák eschewed flashiness, focusing instead on tender intimate lyricism, teeming with ideas, and shaping even his miniatures with the sensibility of a genius. Such music is certainly worthy of a new complete album. Upon the initiative of Supraphon and the Classical Music Academy, the challenging task was undertaken by Ivo Kahánek, an artist whose recording of Dvořák’s Piano Concerto made with the Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Jakub Hrůša has deservedly gained critical acclaim. The present set encompasses larger cycles and occasional pieces, as well as several little-known works, recorded for the very first time. The album of Dvořák’ piano works provides yet another precious insight into the abundant world of the composer’s soul. Ivo Kahánek recalled the creation of the new recording as follows: “Preparations actually began back in the autumn of 2020, when I gave a concert featuring Dvořák’s music at Dvořák Prague and was the patron of the marathon of Dvořák’s pieces for solo piano within the self-same international festival. Yet I would only learn most of the repertoire in the spring of 2021, directly for the purpose of this recording. The most difficult thing to cope with was the time pressure, since due to the availability of the hall and the team we had to record five hours of music within a mere three months. The most gratifying aspect was discovering some little-known gems among Dvořák’s numerous piano works and having the opportunity to view the better-known pieces in a new way”. The album was made with the generous support of the Karel Komárek Family Foundation, the Classical Music Academy, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. © Supraphon

The late Beethoven recordings of pianist Mitsuko Uchida have been career makers, and it is cause for celebration that she has capped them with the 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120, a work that perhaps poses deeper interpretive challenges than any of the late sonatas. The Variations often show a kind of rough humor, and a performer may pick up on that, or the player may deemphasize the humor and seek out the epic qualities of the Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, and Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111. Uchida does neither. The outlines of her usual style, high-contrast and a bit dry, are apparent, but she does not let them dominate her reading. What Uchida realizes is that the abrupt transition from humor to the deepest existential ruminations is part and parcel of Beethoven's late style, and she works to hone the particular character of each Beethoven variation. Her left hand, as usual, is strikingly powerful, and this brings out many striking details (consider the stirring variation 16). The trio of slow minor variations toward the end are given great seriousness but are not in the least overwrought; Uchida achieves an elusive Olympian tone through the final variations. There is much more to experience here, for each variation is fully thought out, but suffice it to say that this is one of the great performances of the Diabelli Variations.© TiVo

Following her successful debut on Decca with the cello concertos of Edward Elgar and Elliott Carter, Alisa Weilerstein serves up another touchstone of her repertoire, Dvorák's Cello Concerto in B minor. Even though this album offers a handful of pieces for cello and piano, which Weilerstein and pianist Anna Polonsky play with charm and sentiment, listeners will pay the most attention to the concerto, which is the program's raison d'être. Weilerstein's highly personal and intensely Romantic style of playing is well-suited to this concerto, which is big on emotion and poignant lyricism, and her long lines and rapt expression effectively carry the piece. The accompaniment by Jirí Belohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra is vibrant and full of color and presence, though at no point is Weilerstein overwhelmed by the ensemble, thanks to the central microphone placement that is closely directed at the cello. Of course, such tight recording tends to expose the roughness of her multiple stops, and her entrance in the first movement is a bit startling. All the same, her rich timbres and passionate singing tone more than make up for any scratchiness one may encounter.© TiVo

‘Miniature’ Beethoven! In our collective idea of the piano, Beethoven’s name is associated with the monument of the thirty-two sonatas, which have often been elevated to the status of the ‘New Testament’ beside the ‘Old Testament’ of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Yet, over a period of decades, the composer of Für Elise constantly returned to the genre of the bagatelle, which he called ‘trifles’ but which actually meant a great deal to him. In this small form par excellence, as in the sonata, Beethoven laid the foundations for a flourishing new genre, the piano miniature. Whether they last a few minutes or a few seconds, these Bagatelles are masterpieces! © harmonia mundi

"Four oeuvres, four pianos" might be a better way of looking at the cover of this album by Alexander Melnikov: Schubert is played on a (simply stunning) Viennese Graf fortepiano from around 1835, Chopin on an Érard grand piano from 1837, Liszt on a Bösendorfer from 1875 and Stravinsky on a modern-day Steinway - the only work which is not played on an instrument contemporary to its composition, as Petrushka dates from 1911, and most certainly not from 2014 like the Steinway in question! The differences between the four instruments are not immediately obvious, but Melnikov's project is to demonstrate just how closely art and instrument follow one another: the Wanderer Fantasy benefits from the clarity of the Graf fortepiano which, while it lacks powerful volume, offers a startling palette of different sounds for the artist to explore. Chopin's twelve Études Op. 10 on the Érard – still within a few years of the Graf – increased the power of the sound in particular, but at the cost of reducing the range of colours in the palette. With the Réminiscences de Don Juan by Liszt, the Bösendorfer unleashes real pianistic thunderbolts, which almost overshadows the content! Finally, Petrushka on the Steinway takes us back into a rather more familiar territory. This is a concept of pairing from Melnikov, whose fondness for historical instruments is well-known. © SM/Qobuz

Fascinated by the folklore of his native Bohemia, and gifted with inexhaustible melodic inventiveness, Antonín Dvořák went through several creative periods as he gradually broke out of the Classical mould; the last of these was deeply influenced by the years he spent in the United States. His kindness and optimism set him apart from the other great Romantics, darker and more tormented in character, and contributed to the unique charm and accessible character of his music, which have earned him justified popularity. The Talich Quartet demonstrates con brio that it is vital for a string quartet to regenerate itself with the arrival of new members who share the same urge to enhance the radiant tradition of the great Czech quartet school. Thus Jan Talich Jr. perpetuates the tradition with a "new" Talich Quartet alongside the violinist Roman Patočka, the eminent former cellist of the Pražák Quartet, Michal Kaňka, and the violist Radim Sedmidubský, previously with the Škampa Quartet. The new line-up began giving concerts in 2021 and immediately won over audiences with the lightness of tone, spontaneous expression, unpredictable accents and innate feeling for folk elements so characteristic of the founding members. As the sole guardian of the group’s legendary discography, it was only natural for La Dolce Volta to invite the members of the Talich Quartet back to the studio to record this new album. © La Dolce Volta

Beethoven's 32 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120, have been programmed before with other variations that were published by Diabelli in a two-part volume along with Beethoven's set, and contemporary composers have written new variations on Diabelli's original waltz, but the program of pianist Rudolf Buchbinder's Diabelli Project is unique. Buchbinder offers a three-act sequence beginning with Beethoven's set and concluding with variations from the original Diabelli group, ending with the fine, brilliant coda by Carl Czerny. In the middle are contemporary pieces commissioned by Buchbinder and includes variations by several compositional heavyweights. One is the nearly nonagenarian Rodion Shchedrin, whose variation is delightful. Other highlights are the atmospheric Blue Orchid of Tan Dun and the variation by Jörg Widmann, who, unlike several of the others, writes a true variation on Diabelli's waltz rather than on one of Beethoven's variations. The original Diabelli variations include an impressively ambitious piece by the 11-year-old Liszt, one by Schubert, and one by Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart. Buchbinder's Beethoven set itself is straightforward and well-crafted; there are more dramatic versions, but his works well in this setting. The sound from Berlin's Jesus-Christus-Kirche is not ideal and robs the contemporary works of spontaneity, but this is an important entry in the continuing history of the Diabelli variations.© TiVo

The common question as to who was the most important Hungarian composer of the twentieth century - Béla Bartók or Zoltán Kodály - would have been vehemently rejected by the two like-minded friends. On the one hand, they shared many ideas and goals, such as researching Hungarian folk music, which they recorded in the countryside before and after the First World War using a wax cylinder phonograph. Bartók and Kodály made the original music of the peasant societies, which has nothing to do with the idea of Csárdás fire and Puszta romanticism, the basis of their own idioms, which they further developed in very personal ways. On the other hand, the careers of the two composers progressed in entirely different ways. While Bartók embraced international modernism and went into American exile at the height of fascist rule in Hungary, Kodály remained in his home country even under politically difficult circumstances, devoting himself unswervingly to his great task: integrating music into the school curriculum in order to make it the basis of national consciousness and social behaviour. The works that Kodály composed in this spirit during the interwar period now form part of the canon of orchestral and choral music - as for instance his Psalmus Hungaricus, the folk opera Háry János or the Dances of Galánta. But there is also a lesser-known Kodály who until 1918, almost unnoticed by the international music world, wrote chamber music whose boldness was met with much hostility in Hungary. At the centre of these works was the cello: the virtuosos emerging from the legendary master class of the cellist David Popper in Budapest introduced Kodály to the instrument's expressive and stylistic variety. But even for the master cellists of his time, the Sonata Op. 4 with piano, the Duet, Op. 7 for Violin and Cello and, above all, the challenging Solo Sonata, Op. 8 were expeditions into new technical and musical territory. Unusual multiple stopping, breakneck runs and abrupt changes of mood, not to mention the narrative power and presence demanded in the monologues and dialogues, create enormous challenges for the performer. The French cellist Marc Coppey has here invited two masters of their craft for this new recording of Kodály's ground-breaking pieces: the Hungarian violinist Barnabás Kelemen, who after winning numerous prizes became a professor at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest at the age of twenty-seven, and the Israeli pianist and composer Matan Porat, a pupil  of Murray Perahia and Maria João Pires at the New York Juilliard School, who today is an internationally renowned and sought-after chamber music partner and film composer. © Audite

Robert Schumann, a versatile, well-educated young artist destined for great things, a man whose music has always amazed with its extent and profundity... and also a person of delicate psyche, which many a time led him to the very border between life and death. Schumann composed the Piano Quartet in C minor, his first piece of this ilk, at the age of 18, and although, notwithstanding his original intention, he would never remake it into a symphony, he still had it on his mind some 20 years later: "I vividly recollect a passage in one of my works (1828), which I thought was romantic, with a spirit different to that of old music that appeared to me as though opening up a new poetic life". The Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47, already attests to Schumann's compositional mastery, with its idiom inspired by Bach and Beethoven yet speaking in a clearly singular language. The 1853 Märchenerzählungen, was one of the composer's last happy creative upswings, written shortly before he attempted suicide by jumping from a bridge into the river Rhine with the aim to put an end to his unbearable mental torment. This Dvořák Piano Quartet's album spans the entire arch of Schumann's work: the beginning, the peak and the end. Just like all his music, it shows how immense beauty is often close to pain and suffering. Immense beauty and anguish of the soul in Schumann's chamber music. © Supraphon

Recorded between 1964 and 1968, Paul Kletzki's respected cycle of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies on Supraphon rightly should be classified as a historical item for specialists, rather than as a recommended option for anyone seeking a great (and great sounding) modern set. Kletzki was an admired and popular conductor, noted for working with both European and American orchestras, and his interpretations of Beethoven are intelligent and insightful, regarded by some reviewers as among the finest of their time; the performances are still valuable for their musicality and significance among mid-20th century offerings. However, these recordings predate the movement for historically informed performance practice, so fans of late Classical and early Romantic period style will find this set of little interest, and only traditionalists will be enthusiastic about it. These analog versions don't compare well with the best contemporary digital recordings, and the sound of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra is a bit too homogenized and at times too muddy in this remastering to make the music fully enjoyable. Although the instruments can be made out clearly enough, some of their upper partials seem to have been eliminated in the reduction of tape hiss, and the ensemble's overall sound seems a little dulled in tone as a result. Artistically, there is much to appreciate here, but this box set faces serious competition from later and better sounding alternatives. © TiVo

Two factors should disqualify this disc immediately. First, the pieces are incomplete and out of order. Second, and arguably more crucially, the pianist misses handfuls of notes in nearly every selection and bucketfuls of notes in some. But some listeners won't care about these things because of the miracle of Sviatoslav Richter. What in another pianist would be grounds for dismissal is here cause for celebration. Check out Richter's Shostakovich: the mysterious colors of his F minor Prelude and Fugue, the fleet virtuosity of his A minor Prelude and Fugue, or the intensity of his E minor Prelude and Fugue. Similarly, the hurtling tempos of Chopin's C major Étude, Op. 10; the shattering climax of his E major Étude, Op. 10; the haunted tragedy of his A minor Étude, Op. 25; or the reckless heroism of his C minor etudes from both Opus 10 and Opus 25. Richter is clearly a pianist with a staggering technique: any pianist who can race through the E minor Étude, Op. 25, at this breakneck pace is manifestly a virtuoso. And clearly he'd rather obey the spirit than the letter of the score. Even though the buildup to the climax of the E major Étude, Op. 10, is splashed with splayed sonorities, the climax itself is so overwhelmingly cathartic that it's hard to recall what led up to it. But above all, there's his sublime interpretation of the Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat major, Op. 61, particularly its evanescent coda, which seems to float into the ether under Richter's tender touch. Recorded in Prague in 1956 (Shostakovich and Chopin's Polonaise-Fantaisie) and in 1960 (Chopin's etudes), the Czech label's monaural sound is plain and direct, but honest. © TiVo

Following the acclaimed Bach recording "Spira, Spera" in early 2021, Emmanuel Despax releases a recording of his most treasured piano concerto alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Litton. The concerto is paired with the 16 Waltzes, Op. 39 for piano four-hands, performed here with his wife and fellow pianist, Miho Kawashima. “Recording Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is a childhood dream of mine, and it was wonderful to play it with such outstanding musicians. I have grown up with it, obsessively listening to all the recordings I could find for months on end, and it is hard to describe what this piece represents to me ... I wanted to pair the concerto with the exquisite Waltzes, Op. 39 for piano four hands, and show a more intimate side of Brahms. Each one is a different shade, a different mood, like daily entries in one’s personal diary. It was very special for me to be joined by my wife Miho Kawashima to record these charming and delightful pieces”. (Emmanuel Despax)© Signum Classics