Piano Sonata n° 5 Sharp

In 2017 Decca published the 10-CD Box "Mendelssohn Complete Piano Works”. The recordings (2005-2014) include 59 World Premieres.

Julius Katchen performs the composer's work whom he most favored; again, highly-esteemed recordings among classical cognoscenti.

Paul Lewis performed all the Beethoven piano sonatas on tour in the USA and Europe between the 2005 and 2007 seasons, in parallel with his complete recording of the cycle for Harmonia Mundi. His interpretation of the Lizst sonata was distinguished by the prestigious Edison Award, while his recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas received two Gramophone Awards in 2008.

Rudolf Buchbinder is firmly established as one of the most important pianists on the international scene, he is a regular guest of such renowned orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, London Philharmonic, National Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has collaborated with the world’s most distinguished conductors including Abbado, Dohnányi, Dudamel, Frühbeck de Burgos, Giulini, Harnoncourt, Maazel, Masur, Mehta, Saraste, Sawallisch and Thielemann and is a regular guest at the Salzburger Festspiele and other major festivals around the world.

Although much else has now been recorded, the piano music of the Dutch composer Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981) largely remain to be discovered. This first conspectus of his piano music covers fifty years of composition. It shows how early influences among them Bach, Brahms, Franck, Hindemith and Ravel were subsumed into a musical language distinguished by its textural clarity and harmonic warmth. Five of the works in this album are receiving their first recording.

Magarov started recording in 1933 when he was 21 because he was an accompaniment player, and recorded until 1991 when he died last year. It contains the sound recordings of the sessions recorded by Magarov during the LP era in UK Decca and Orchid Phillips, and the live recording of the Swiss Romand broadcast in Montreux, Switzerland in 1988.

It's not as if recordings of the 62 Piano Sonatas of Franz Josef Haydn are thick on the ground. Among the relative big names, there's Jeno Jando on Naxos and John McCabe on Decca. Among the less well-known names, there's Walid Akl on Koch Discover, Roland Batik on Camerata, Ronald Brautigam on BIS, Walter Olbertz on Berlin Classics, and Christine Schornsheim on Capriccio. And for those listeners with record players and aging memories, there's also the venerable Hungaroton cycle, the first complete recorded cycle, that coupled relatively well-known Hungarians like Zoltán Kocsis and Dezsö Ránki with nearly unknown Hungarians like János Sebestyén and the inimitable Zsuzsa Pertis.

Sampling the three periods of Alexander Scriabin's music, Vadym Kholodenko presents a coherent and colorful program that includes a representative handful of the early preludes, two of the middle piano sonatas, a set of etudes, and three of the poems for keyboard. While Scriabin's music steadily evolved from his youthful Chopinesque phase and a transitional, impressionistic period, similar in evocative harmonies and effects to Debussy, to a nearly atonal and atmospheric style all his own, there was always a virtuosic complexity in his piano pieces that makes it challenging for performers and listeners alike.

Hailed by some as the third primary figure among great Russian pianists of the twentieth century's second half, Lazar Berman has occasionally lived up to that reputation, but frequently has not. Emil Gilels, the first genius-level Soviet pianist to become well-known in the West, insisted that there was one artist, yet unheard in the West, who was the greater artist. Later, after Sviatoslav Richter's arrival in Europe and America, most felt Gilels had been correct. Still later, however, Gilels maintained that yet another pianist, Lazar Berman, was the finest of the three. After the initial stir created by Berman's 1976 American tour and other appearances in the West, critical opinion held that, while he was an extraordinary if uneven artist, he was not superior to the protean Richter or to the clear-minded Gilels. Still, his art was of an order by no means common.