New Piano Albums

Yoav Levanon:2024-11-19

Liszt – Piano Concertos 1 & 2, Totentanz

Yoav Levanon is only 20 years old but has already released two solo albums — his "A Monument for Beethoven" included a much-praised performance of Liszt's mighty Sonata in B minor. So it's only logical that his first album with orchestra features three concertante works by Liszt — the Concertos Nos 1 & 2 and the Totentanz.
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Sergei Redkin:2024-11-17

Prokofiev – Piano Sonatas 6 & 7

According to Sergei Redkin, the Sixth and Seventh Sonatas are "the brightest examples of Prokofiev’s genius: two symphonies for piano, two deeply tragic poems, two vivid documents of their time. I’ve been in love with this music since my school years; I hope this recording will help bring it to the attention of new listeners."
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Bruce (Xiaoyu) Liu:2024-11-15

Tchaikovsky – The Seasons

Since winning the International Chopin Competition in 2021, Bruce Liu's life has changed completely: “I’ve gone from being a student to not having much time at home for a whole year, being constantly on tour. I find the ‘cosiness’ and ‘intimacy’ in this music give me a chance to stand back and reflect, because it is so much about private memories.”
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Peter Jablonski:2024-11-13

Ronald Stevenson – Piano Works

This album includes several world première recordings of works by the Scottish pianist-composer Ronald Stevenson, who wrote music in a variety of styles – often with direct reference to other composers or works, visible in titles like: Piccolo Niccolò Paganinesco, Little Jazz Variations on Purcell's New Scotch Tune, or Pensées sur des Préludes de Chopin.
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Khatia Buniatishvili:2024-11-11

Mozart – Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 23, "Sonata facile" K 545

Khatia Buniatishvili plays and directs two of Mozart most beloved concertos, No. 20 in D minor and No. 23 in A major, and rounds off with a performance of the "Sonata facile". In the booklet, she shares something that her piano teacher once said which has remained with her since: “Mozart’s music is smiley but there is always a hidden sadness in that smile. Like in your eyes.”
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Maurizio & Daniele Pollini:2024-11-10

Schubert

The great Maurizio Pollini, who passed away in March 2024, planned and recorded his last album together with his son Daniele. It showcases the three essential areas of Schubert’s music for piano – sonatas, short pieces, and works for four hands – exemplified by the Piano Sonata No. 18 (recorded by Maurizio), the Moments Musicaux (recorded by Daniele), and the four-hand Fantasia in F minor.
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Alexandre Tharaud:2024-11-08

BachTharaud

On his new album, Alexandre Tharaud makes a personal selection of J S Bach's music on the piano. Among the many works included, only a few were originally written for solo keyboard – most of the tracks are the pianist's own transcriptions of works for other solo instruments or for orchestra, and excerpts from the Passions.
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Edna Stern:2024-11-05

Carnaval

Edna Stern's Schumann portrait album features Carnaval Op. 9 and Kinderszenen Op. 15 but also Stern’s own first recorded composition, very much inspired by Schumann: "It is while reading a passage written by Schumann in his journal, that I got the idea to compose. Schumann believed that any pianist should put aside two of his ten fingers, and use them for the purpose of composing."
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Zlata Chochieva:2024-11-01

Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tsfasman – Works for Piano & Orchestra

Zlata Chochieva is well known for creating unexpected associations – on Chiaroscuro, she combined the worlds of Scriabin and Mozart, and Im freien featured the little-known Petit Histoire by Draeseke alongside Ravel and Schumann. Here, Prokofievs second Piano Concerto is prefaced by the obscure Rimsky-Korsakov Concerto. Then comes a total change of atmosphere with Alexander Tsfasman's Jazz Suite, evoking Hollywood and Soviet film scores.
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Louise Besette:2024-10-31

Port of Call: New England – Ives, MacDowell

Louise Bessette's A Piano Around the World series began with a stop in the Caribbean to pay tribute to the “Chopin of Curaçao,” Wim Statius Muller (1930–2019), followed by a detour to Buenos Aires, the home of tangueros steeped in the music of Astor Piazzolla. Now she heads north to visit the music of two composers from the United States: Edward MacDowell and Charles Ives.
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Marc-André Hamelin:2024-10-29

Hammerklavier – Beethoven Sonatas Op 106 & Op 2 No 3

Pianist-composer Marc-André Hamelin is well-known worldwide for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, in concert and on recordings(89 albums to date) and his "near-superhuman" technique (New York Times) with which he also takes on great works of the established repertoire – as on this Beethoven album.
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Isabel Dobarro:2024-10-27

Kaleidoscope

Isabel Dobarro’s new album proposes an interchange among women composers from distant continents, cultures, and traditions. "Kaleidoscope explores the spectrum of my musical journey… I deeply admire each of the composers selected for this album, and it was both a thrill and a delight to perform their works. Each composition has affected me profoundly".
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Daniil Trifonov:2024-10-25

My American Story – North

With My American Story – North, Daniil Trifonov retraces his immigrant’s journey in the “New World,” through American piano scores ranging from jazz and swing to modernism, minimalism, and popular soundtracks. “I did not wish to record an anthology,” he says. “These are simply pieces that I feel personally connected to. Favorites of mine that speak to me on a musical level.”
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Anna Tsybuleva:2024-10-23

Debussy – Complete Preludes

Anna Tsybuleva shot into the international spotlight in 2015 when she was crowned First Prize Winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition. "When I play Debussy, I seek to capture the feeling of wind, of squinting in the shining sun, of the goosebumps from 'the sounds and fragrances floating in the evening air', with my hands."
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Jaeden Izik-Dzurko:2024-10-21

Leeds 2024 – Chopin, Ravel, Ligeti

Jaeden Izik-Dzurko won this year's Leeds Piano competition after performing Brahms' second Piano Concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in the final round. On this album are a selection of recordings taken from the previous competition rounds including Chopin's Scherzo No. 1, Ravel's Miroirs, and two Ligeti Études.
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Eloïse Bella Kohn:2024-10-18

Parisienne – Massenet, Ravel

When Eloïse Bella Kohn first discovered Massenet's almost completely forgotten Piano Concerto in 2021, she immediately felt it was high time it had a renaissance. On her first album with orchestra (Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and conductor Christoph Koncz), she pairs it with one of the most celebrated works of French piano literature, Ravel's Concerto in G.
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Igor Levit:2024-10-16

Brahms

This triple album, recorded in the historic Vienna Musikverein, features Johannes Brahms' two piano concertos, performed by pianist Igor Levit and the Wiener Philharmoniker under Christian Thielemann, and the composer's late piano pieces Opp. 116–119. As a special encore Levit and Thielemann also play the four-hand Brahms Waltz op. 39/15 together.
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Roger Muraro:2024-10-14

Liszt – Années de pèlerinage

Franz Liszt was twenty-four when he began composing the Années de pèlerinage, and would continue to work on the cycle for the rest of his life. As Liszt himself declared, it aims to express – more than words, more than images – an ineffable poetry of sound. After devoting the last few years to contemporary music, Roger Muraro now gives renewed priority to the Romantic repertory.
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Shorena Tsintsabadze:2024-10-12

Georgian Project

After two albums featuring the Western heroes of Romanticism – Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff – Shorena Tsintsabadze turns to her roots in Georgia. "There is no more beautiful place in the world... With this project, I would like to present the music of Georgian composers from different eras, from the 19th century to the present."
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Claire Huangci:2024-10-09

Made in USA

American music is a melting pot of musical styles and influences. However, Claire Huangci sees a prevalent trait connecting them all – a daring spirit and freshness, a defiance of traditions, and rejuvenation in musical form and sound. It is represented here by Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Amy Beach's Variations on Balkan Themes, Barber's Piano Sonata, and Earl Wild's Etudes after Gershwin.
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Fazil Say:2024-10-07

Oiseax tristes

Oiseaux tristes takes its name from the second piece of Ravel’s Miroirs, in Fazil Say's opinion "one of the most comprehensive and interesting works in the piano repertoire." The two other works on the album are Debussy's Suite Bergamasque and Couperin's Ordre No. 21, to which Say was introduced by a harpsichordist friend in Istanbul.
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Elisabeth Leonskaja:2024-10-05

Berg, Schoenberg, Webern

Of the triumvirate of composers known as the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg wrote the most frequently for the piano. Alban Berg and Anton Webern were his most gifted pupils. Webern’s obsessive devotion to Schoenberg led him to adopt the twelve-note system even more rigorously than his mentor. Berg was more connected to the 19th century and always sounds the most Romantic of the three.
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Arseniy Gusev:2024-10-02

Musical Offering

Arseniy Gusev finished his master's program at the Yale School of Music as a composer in 2024, and now continues his studies at the Juilliard School as a pianist. His debut on the Steinway & Sons label offers a uniquely wide-ranging program of music by Bach, Dowland, Retinsky (born 1986), and Antonello da Caserta (active in the late 14th and early 15th centuries).
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Alessio Bax:2024-09-30

Forgotten Dances

On his ninth solo album on Signum Records, Alessio Bax explores works associated with dancing, from Bach to Bartók, including tangos and waltzes spanning three centuries. A great variety of styles are showcased in this program, which also features Bax's own arrangement of Ravel's La Valse.
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