Arranged For Piano 4 Hands

Robert Schumann‘s intention to create valuable and, with regard to didactics, sensibly created music for children and young people was not limited to the world-famous Album für die Jugend Op. 68 for piano (1848). Apart from Liederalbum für die Jugend Op. 79 (1849), he also created two works which should encourage four-handed piano playing which was very popular in 19th-century domestic music.

Unlike many piano arrangements, all these pieces have been arranged by the composers themselves for four hands. The Piano Duo Trenkner-Speidel presents these arrangements in authentic interpretations on a sonorous Steinway concert grand piano from 1901. Evelinde Trenkner and Sontraud Speidel have recorded a whole series of CDs on MDG exhibiting their perfect symbiosis.

This is the latest album by Keisuke Yasujima, a pianist who has been attracting attention from many music fans for his unique musical activities while practicing as a lawyer. This is the world premiere recording of a piano arrangement of Ysaye's masterpiece "Sonata for Solo Violin," one of the pinnacle of violin art. Pianist Keisuke Nijima and arranger Kohei Owaki spent a long time to unravel the work, and they are convinced that "if Ysaye could have played the piano, he would certainly have written this way.

Kissin still looks very much the boy in the cover photo of this 1994 recital, one of the earliest follow-ups to his rapturously received Chopin recitals, also on RCA. He is jsut as phenomenal here. His commanding technique is reined in for the two Haydn sonatas, yet he presses just enough on the classical line to make it sound more vibrant and enticing. Richter made a great specialty of the Schubert A minor Sonata D. 784, yet Kissin steps up with his own less haunted, more heroic interpretation–it works extremely well. Both pianists rescue Schubert from his cliched role as a lyrical innocent, revealing his underlying Beethovenian aspirations.

This release is the fruit of the French pianist Nicolas Stavy’s efforts to uncover unknown works by Dmitri Shostakovich. Spanning some fifty years of the composer’s career, these rarities include early piano pieces influenced by Chopin and the fragment of an unfinished violin sonata, but is bookended by arrangements of symphonic music, by Shostakovich himself and by Mahler, a constant influence.