Chopin Piano Concertos

The Chongqing-born pianist Sa Chen first gained international recognition 12 years ago, delighting the audiences and judges of the Leeds Piano Competition with the delicate brilliance of her technique and her youth – at 16 years old, she was the youngest competitor that year. In the intervening years, having studied with Joan Havill at the Guildhall and won the 2005 Van Cliburn competition, she has recorded two discs, with JVC and Harmonia Mundi…

Oddly enough, while the sleeve-notes are comprehensive, especially where these two concertos are concerned, there isn’t actually too much background on the composer himself. All this is despite this being a Norwegian label. Pianist and composer Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen was born in 1823, and died in 1874, contributing some forty-four opus numbers, including solo piano works, chamber music, and these two piano concertos. He dedicated many of his compositions to the Polish, Russian and French aristocracy.

The start of an important and exciting series: the complete piano concertos of Hummel played on period instruments. Johann Nepomuk Hummel (a contemporary of Beethoven, and highly esteemed by him) while firmly rooted in the Classical Style, became one of the most important composers of the Early Romantic Style. A virtuoso pianist himself, he wrote a substantial oeuvre for his instrument. His piano concertos are written in “Bravura” style, displaying an incredible virtuosity and brilliance, featuring (double) runs of parallel thirds and sixths, intricate arpeggios and thundering octave passages. Even today the technical level of this piano writing proves to be a daunting challenge to many pianists.

There has never been a more exciting pianist that Martha Argerich. Throughout her career, any appearance by her guarantees sellout crowds and an evening of memorable, not to say insane, music making. She has always drastically limited her repertoire about a dozen concertos, a few more solo and chamber works and will not perform or record solo recitals at all any more. But every single thing that she has recorded is a prime recommendation, plain and simple. She's one of the very few artists whose recordings one should collect just because of whom she is: unique and incomparable. These two concertos perfectly illustrate her gifts as an interpreter. Your ears will be glued to your speakers.

Junko Urayama has started piano from the age of 4. After graduated from the high school and the collage of Toho Gakuen School of Music, she continued her study at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland in 1994. She won the 1st Prize and the Special Chopin Prize at the Radziwill International Competition (Poland) in 1995 and the top prize in the Ennio Porrino Piano Competition (Italy) in 1998.