Chopin: 傅聪 Fou Ts'ong

Chopin Year 2010 coincides with the 60th anniversary of Daniel Barenboims stage début, and as a pianist he has decided to devote this year to the great Romantic master of the keyboard. Fryderyc Chopin was born on 1 March 1810 in a small village near Warsaw, and on the eve of the 200th anniversary of this date Barenboim gave this wildly acclaimed Warsaw recital as part of an extensive European tour. Recorded live at the National Philharmonic Hall, Warsaw, the programme presents some of the composers best-known works, including the great B flat minor Sonata with its famous Funeral March, which sounded to many as the composer may well have imagined it.

These reflective character pieces are handled with finesse and poetic expression by Barenboim, who usually plays such subtle Romantic music with great restraint, thoughtfulness, and refinement, and seldom lets its passions get away from his control. To the extent that Barenboim plays with a delicate touch and Deutsche Grammophon's wide audio range allows for many nuances, there may be some concern whether the volume of the recording will need adjustment because a soft level makes the piano seem too faint, while a recommended middle setting yields a more credible presence.

Chopin, Piano Concertos No. 1 and 2, performed by pianist Sa Chen and the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Lawrence Foster, conductor (Pentatone Classics). Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra followers will remember Sa Chen from a year ago. In October 2007, she joined the orchestra for an unusual work, a piano concerto by Clara Schumann. Chen looks about 12 on her album cover here, but she's 29. She is a promising pianist.

Described by the Gramophone Magazine as ‘virtuoso of power and poetry’, Eldar Nebolsin is considered one of the most versatile and interesting musicians of his generation.

Nicolai Lugansky’s solo disc debut for Erato is more than just another recording of the Chopin etudes by a new virtuoso on the block. He’s got fingers, to be sure, but also a mind, an ear, and more than a little imagination. The pianist guides Op. 10 No. 1’s arpeggio sequences with a pliable, singing bass line, and offsets Op. 10 No. 2’s murmuring right-hand 16th-notes with intelligently shaped left-hand chords. Similarly, your ear gravitates more toward Op. 10 No. 7’s playful left-hand accents and dynamic jolts rather than to Luagnsky’s suave dispatch of the right hand’s rapid double notes.

Dances is a dazzling display of solo works for piano from Bach to Boogie Woogie; via Chopin, Granados, Albeniz, Scriabin and the Blue Danube. For his second solo album on Decca, Benjamin Grosvenor has assembled a typically imaginative and appealing programme of piano music inspired by the dance form.

DG are set to honour the supreme artistry of Daniel Barenboim throughout the coming year as he approaches his 80th birthday next November. The anniversary celebrations of the great pianist and conductor’s remarkable legacy began on 31 December 2021 with the release of Debussy’s Clair de lune, one of the highlights of Maestro Barenboim’s first DG album of 2022. Specially recorded in Barenboim’s Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, Encores features miniature masterpieces by Albéniz, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Schubert and Schumann.

Chopin and Debussy were two seekers of the absolute who, in their art distilled to the quintessence, succeeded in erasing all traces of their workmanship and their supreme compositional technique. The connections between them are as numerous as they are subtle, never obvious, yet so very profound. The achievement of Javier Perianes here is to have teased out the artistic thread linking two geniuses who soar high above their respective centuries.

This enthralling recital by the young American pianist George Li, silver medallist at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, marks his recording debut and launches a new relationship with Warner Classics. Captured at a live performance in the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St Petersburg, it presents a dramatically conceived programme of works by Haydn, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Liszt: a descent into deep darkness; re-emergence into the light, and a concluding, boisterous celebration.