Béatrice Hardy Laudrin

These works from Mahler and Schoenbergare are expressionist and romantic monuments, but they are already at a turning point. The harmonic tension is taken to extremes, and dissonances are daring, although always justified by the expression. Pianist Beatrice Berrut has carried out the pharaonic work of transcription and paraphrase for piano of these four works originally conceived for symphony orchestra and string sextet.

For her second Warner Classics release, young Italian pianist Beatrice Rana turns to a pinnacle of the solo keyboard repertoire and a composer she has described as "my first love": Johann Sebastian Bach. Her interpretation of his epic Goldberg Variations bears out Le Monde's judgement that "Beatrice Rana certainly has nothing left to prove when it comes to technique, but what makes an impression are her calm maturity and her sense of architecture," and Gramophone's that she is "a fully developed artist of a stature that belies her tender years." Bach was the composer who most obsessed Beatrice Rana as a child, and in a recent interview with Pianist magazine, she confessed that it would be his music, and above all the Goldberg Variations, that she would choose if she had to devote her life to a single composer.