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Schubert : Fantasie in F Minor & Other Piano Duets

Andreas Staier

Chamber Music - Released March 17, 2017 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or - Choc de Classica - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
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Schubert : Octuor - Berwald : Grand Septuor

Anima Eterna

Classical - Released April 5, 2019 | Alpha Classics

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This recording is Anima’s very first to be completely devoted to instrumental ensemble music. A group of musicians headed by violinist Jakob Lehmann breathes new life into two 19th-century masterpieces. Schubert's Octet in F is a crown jewel from the repertoire, taking its cue from Beethoven’s celebrated Septet yet at the same time paving the way toward the "Grosse Sinfonie". Roughly 20 years after its iconic recording of the complete Schubert symphonies, Anima brings its signature approach to the composer’s chamber music to explore it with the insights and “language skills” developed back then and from thereon. In contrast to Schubert, Franz Berwald has been largely forgotten – undeservedly, as this gifted Swede left behind an oeuvre that is both surprisingly modern and delightfully original. Performed on period instruments, using authoritative sources and contemporary playing techniques, these brilliant pages of large ensemble music are now ready to be rediscovered and enjoyed once again. © Alpha Classics
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Franck, Ravel and Debussy: Piano Works

Ivan Moravec

Classical - Released October 29, 2001 | Supraphon a.s.

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The Complete Symphonies, Vol. 4: Symphony No. 5, D. 485 - Symphony No. 6, D. 589

Residentie Orkest The Hague

Classical - Released October 7, 2022 | Challenge Classics

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Schubert’s musical ideas sometimes bear a family resemblance to themes by Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven, but nevertheless his own style was already precociously developed. One would not mistake his Fifth Symphony of 1816 for the work of any other composer, though its difference in character from the Fourth Symphony is equally striking. Here, omitting clarinets, trumpets or timpani, Schubert uses a reduced orchestration in comparison with his previous symphonies. Schubert began his Sixth Symphony in October 1817 and completed it in the following February. The Sixth Symphony represents a sideways step in Schubert’s symphonic development, a digression which may be explained by the phenomenal popularity of Rossini. At this time Rossini’s operas were being received with tremendous enthusiasm in Vienna. Keen to earn a living from his compositions, Schubert now emulated aspects of the style which was enjoying such vogue. © Challenge Records
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Schubert: Late Piano Works, Vol. 1

Andrea Lucchesini

Classical - Released June 7, 2019 | audite Musikproduktion

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
Andrea Lucchesini’s career continues discreetly in the shadow of more mediatized Italian pianists. The star pupil, like Nelson Goerner, of the great Maria Tipo, Lucchesini has invested a lot of his time into concerts and recording. After becoming known for his interpretations of Luciano Berio’s music, in particular his concerto Echoing Curves directed by the composer himself, he has recorded the integrity of Beethoven’s sonatas for the label Stradivarius.Over the last few years, Lucchesini has concentrated on Schubert, “my great love”, he calls him. These two very different composers on the cusp of romanticism fascinate Andrea Lucchesini who presents here his first volume dedicated to the late works of Schubert. These works were written at a time when the composer of Lieder returned to composing sonatas amidst greats like Beethoven who also coincidentally lived in the same town.For Lucchesini, Schubert remains an enigma. The man left behind almost no written documents, he never stayed put in one precise residence and no one could understand his shyness, agitation, nor his latent homosexuality. “Rediscovering his final works”, says Andrea Lucchenini, “showed me the difference between the artist who entertained his friends and the composer who worked in solitude without any prospect of being published nor played.” Such solitude that longs to break free can be heard clearly in this album, particularly in the interpretation of Andantino of Sonata D. 959 through which troubling phantoms move. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Schubert: Piano à quatre mains

Claire Désert

Classical - Released October 29, 2015 | Mirare

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Schubert: Piano Music, Sonata D 959 A Major

Christian Zacharias

Miscellaneous - Released February 1, 2007 | Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm (MDG)

This superb recording stands out from the crowd of reinterpretations of the three masterful piano sonatas from the end of Schubert's life. It is part of a group that contains many of them -- the group that attempts to strip away the veneer of innocence from Schubert and rediscover him as an intense, inward, rather experimental figure awed by Beethoven's achievements in much the same way as was Brahms. Yet it transcends the great majority of the available recordings of the Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959, in whatever style, with its sheer musicality. There is a great deal of detail in Zacharias' performance -- hear the tension generated in the sonata's opening bars as the pianist atomizes it into a sequence of small events, with those occurring in the left hand given equal weight with those in the right. The balance between the hands is exquisitely controlled through the entire movement, and the way Zacharias manages to fuse what seems like a progression of sudden impulses into a larger framework is nothing short of miraculous. Yet the real triumph comes in the Andantino second movement, where Zacharias has to set up a contrast on a larger scale between a melancholy but calm F sharp minor melody in the outer sections and an extraordinary outburst of passion in the central section -- one that subsumes an improvisatory free flow of emotion within a strict development of ideas in a way matched only in the late sonatas of Beethoven himself. It is not that Zacharias does anything radical, just that the impact of each part of the structure is calculated for its maximum effect. The return of the F sharp minor melody, imbued with echoes of the trauma it has been through, has rarely indeed been done with such a sense of heightened awareness. The sensitivity to detail continues through the two final movements and the four small dances that close the album and bring the listener back to earth after an extraordinary journey to the center of the soul. Zacharias' earlier recording of the Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959, offers fascinating comparisons with this disc, but its sound environment cannot compare with the dizzying palette of sounds offered by MDG's ingenious engineers. © TiVo
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Consolations

Saskia Giorgini

Solo Piano - Released June 9, 2023 | PentaTone

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
Pianist Saskia Giorgini found both critical and commercial success with her 2022 recording of Liszt's Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, and this 2023 release, which immediately climbed onto classical best-seller charts, follows directly on the earlier album, with the same Bösendorfer piano and the same recording location, the Lisztzentrum in Raiding, Austria. Listeners will not be disappointed, for Consolations has all the virtues of her first Liszt album and adds a few more. The wonderfully controlled lyricism of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses recurs in the heavily programmatic title work, where Giorgini's playing hints at the presence of all kinds of stories. She plainly excels in the religious, late Liszt, and there are two wonderful examples here, the Deux Legends, portraits of St. Francis of Assisi praying to the birds, and of St. François de Paule. These are difficult works that combine mysticism with Lisztian virtuosity; annotator Mark Berry is right to stress that Liszt did not fully renounce the virtuosity in his later years, but that is not all. Giorgini is just as good in the flashy Three Caprices-Valses and the reflective Liebesträume, the best-known music on the album. In the Valse-Impromptu, she has an uncanny way of suggesting the feeling of spontaneity that seems to have marked Liszt's own playing. Will Giorgini go on with Liszt? She certainly has the technical and emotional wherewithal to do so and to take on more famous works than these.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Chopin: 24 Préludes, Piano Sonata No. 2

Martha Argerich

Classical - Released January 1, 1977 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Bartók, Janáček, Szymanowski

Piotr Anderszewski

Classical - Released January 26, 2024 | Warner Classics

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After well-received albums devoted to Bach and Schumann, pianist Piotr Anderszewski turns to music of his native Eastern Europe on this 2024 release, which made classical best-seller charts early that year. Anderszewski is known for his artfully curated and constructed programs, but this one is not so cohesive; the excerpts from Janáček's On an Overgrown Path set were recorded in 2016, while the short pieces by Szymanowski and Bartók were added in 2023. The Janáček works, though short, are of a slightly different kind from the other pieces, which are real miniatures. When Anderszewski gets to those, however, he hits his stride. Especially interesting are Bartók's 14 Bagatelles, Op. 6, presented in full. These aren't heard overly often. Anderszewski says that "the works recorded on this album carry within them a spirit of rebellion," which doesn't quite fit these short pieces, but then on his second try, he comes much closer: "No room here for stylization or decorum; they draw upon the very roots of music." Early works composed in 1908, they contain ideas that Bartók would explore over his entire career. They have folkish accents but also intensive exploration of mode and rhythm. Anderszewski's careful style is ideal here, and the listener hearing the whole set will become increasingly engrossed. Hardly less appealing are the six pieces from Szymanowski's 20 Mazurkas, Op. 50, which explore the folk dance model in a less radical but no less detailed way. For the lover of Eastern European music of the early 20th century, which is finally and rightfully finding a consistent place on concert programs, this is a recording that will merit multiple hearings.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Dvořák: Piano Trios Nos. 3 & 4

Christian Tetzlaff

Chamber Music - Released October 5, 2018 | Ondine

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Sviatoslav Richter plays Alexander Scriabin

Sviatoslav Richter

Classical - Released January 1, 2017 | Praga Digitals

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Lalo: Violin Concertos, Op. 20 & Op. 29. "Concerto Russe"

Dmitry Smirnov

Concertos - Released June 16, 2023 | Prospero Classical

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Méditation

Andreas Staier

Classical - Released February 2, 2024 | Alpha Classics

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The title Méditation makes this release by harpsichordist Andreas Staier sound like a crossover outing, but instead, it is typical of the carefully argued programs this keyboardist has offered in the past, in his characteristic muscular style. Staier meditates on two short motifs that date back to before the Baroque; one is the second line of the Pange lingua chant, the other the bell-like octave-fifth-sixth-third that shows up in countless compositions, and he shows how these motifs were tied into the style of the High Baroque as it developed. Bach appears only at the end, with a pair of preludes and fugues; in Staier's words, he is at the "vanishing point" of the program. Prior to that are various pieces of the Baroque puzzle, including selections from the preludes and fugues of J.C.F. Fischer's Ariadne Musica, a likely model for Bach's own. A fugue from Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, the most influential counterpoint text of the day, is also included. Staier also contributes some of his own compositions, devised during the COVID-19 lockdowns, that recognizably refer to the other ideas on the album but may, for some, break the mood. A highly thoughtful exegesis on Baroque style that is beautifully recorded at Berlin's Teldex studio and is, despite all the deep thinking, appealing in a visceral way.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Frédéric Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2, Ballade, Valse & Fantaisie - Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 4

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Classical - Released April 1, 2014 | Praga Digitals

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
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Richard Strauss: Piano Works

Guillaume Bellom

Solo Piano - Released April 5, 2024 | Mirare

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Schubert: Octet

Sabine Meyer

Chamber Music - Released April 24, 2020 | Mirare

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama
At the height of mental and physical pain, Schubert wrote Octet in F major in 1824, recalling the Septet, Op. 20 composed by Beethoven at about the same age. Their age gap meant that Beethoven opened the Classical age and Schubert the Romantic age. Schubert was composing his first works while Beethoven already had many masterpieces behind him. Played for the first time during a concert in homage to Beethoven who had just passed away, this marvellous Octet didn’t find its way to an editor at the time. It was found to be too long (62 minutes here, respecting all the repeats!) and was forgotten until its first complete edition in 1861 when it was admired by Brahms. During the String Quintet written four years later, the Octet alternates (as so often happens with Schubert) between moments of Viennese grace and deep melancholy. The Modigliani Quartet give a magnificent performance with experienced musicians including clarinettist Sabine Meyer, who showcases her incredibly expressive playing in the sublime Adagio, a true lullaby opening up to the next world that poor Schubert was awaiting in his early thirties. Bruno Schneider on horn, Dag Jensen on bassoon and Knut Erik Sundquist on double bass complete this ensemble of superb musicians giving Schubert a tender and fraternal humanity. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Winner Of The 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw 2015

Seong-Jin Cho

Classical - Released November 6, 2015 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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