Li̇pedema

Born in Chongqing 19 years before he made this Chopin recording, Yundi Li is too old to qualify as a prodigy, and he's absurdly young to be labelled a "great master", but that's indubitably what he is. He has all the poetry and authority of Evgeny Kissin, but no whiff of that Russian's aggressive self-projection. When he won the Warsaw Competition at 18, he announced that he wanted to become "the next Zimerman", but the real Zimerman turned down his request to study with him, saying there was nothing more he could teach him. This CD demonstrates the point to perfection: the only flaw one might detect–over-pedalling in a Nocturne–proves to be a carefully calculated effect in one of a series of gorgeously fresh renderings of hackneyed favourites. Li opens with the third sonata, establishing a big golden tone from the outset; he points up the architecture of this episodic work with leisurely assurance, and if his tempi seem leisurely even in the fast movements, that is because he brings out every detail with pellucid clarity. How did such quintessentially romantic playing emerge from the heart of China? Don't even ask: just marvel, and enjoy.

Russian composers have made a significant contribution to the repertoire of music for cello and orchestra. Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, deftly scored for an 18th-century orchestra, reveals his admiration for Mozart whereas the Pezzo capriccioso is full of ripe charm. in the year of Tchaikovsky’s death, Rimsky-Korsakov composed the attractive Serenade, Op. 37 and his student, Glazunov, both absorbed and continued the great Romantic lineage with his own sonorous and beautiful Concerto ballata, the poignant Chant du ménestrel, and the iberian evocations of the Sérénade espagnole from Deux Morceaux.

Debut album for Ying Li, winner of the first edition of the Antonio Mormone International Prize in 2021 after having also established herself at the Young Concert Artist Auditions in New York and at the Concours Musical International de Montréal as a finalist.

Australian-Chinese wunderkind, Christian Li, became the youngest ever First Prize winner at the Menuhin Competition in 2018. Now, he becomes the youngest ever artist to record Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as he presents his debut album at the age of 13, play-directing a chamber ensemble from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The album also includes a traditional folk tune inspired by the fishermen's harvest in the South China Sea and adapted by contemporary Chinese composer Li Zili.

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.

Lykke Li returns with her fifth studio album EYEYE. The album is an eight track story about lust, attraction, attachment, and rejection; the landscape of love. The songs are inhabited by moving images that neither start nor end. Each film functions as a visual loop, concise as a haiku, yet continuing in perpetuity. The result is a somatic, repetitious experience. Compounding chapters between a dream and reality.

Young piano sensation Yundi Li collaborates with Seiji Ozawa and the Berlin Philharmoniker to present two highly innovative and provocative keyboard works from the 20th-century– Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 and Ravel Piano Concerto in G major.