Pogorelich

As the climax of his hugely successful 2018/19 season, in which he celebrated both his sixtieth birthday and the fortieth anniversary of the launch of his sensational career, legendary Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich releases an eagerly-anticipated new recording on Sony Classical. This will be his first new album since 1998. The repertoire comprises two sonatas by Beethoven - No. 22, Op. 54, and No. 24, Op. 78 and a work written just over a hundred years later, Rachmaninoffs Second Piano Sonata Op. 36.

For four whole decades, the legendary pianist Ivo Pogorelich has continued to make an invaluable contribution to classical music. His innovative and highly suggestive interpretations have served, like few others in our time, to broaden the horizons, understanding and experience of pianistic literature. Pogorelich exhibits the spirit of an explorer, which is measured by the lucidity with which he discovers new expressive abilities of music, and reflected in pianism of the highest aesthetic value, unique virtuosity and technical mastery. His uncompromising artistic standards and deep commitment to finding the ideality of musical expression are what allow Pogorelich to deliver remarkably authentic and extraordinarily compelling performances of sublime artistic power.

The new recording presented by Ivo Pogorelich brings a clear, sharp and impressive lesson of Piano Mastery. You may love him or hate him, but in any event, there's no doubt that his musical approach is phenomenal. From the many versions available, Pollini, Rubinstein, Zimerman and others have done a good work, but compared to Pogorelich, they simply fade away.

Pogorelich's playing is so clear, his melodic lines so distinct, his touch so light, and his phrasing so perfect that this music will thrill and transport you to another world.

The phrasing is divine. Any great player can bring off the alla Turka, but his minuet and especially the theme and variations are peerless.

Frédéric Chopin was the most famous composer of Polish origin in the history of Western concert music. He was a progressive who revolutionized the harmonic content, the texture, and the emotional quality of the small piano piece, turning light dance forms, nocturnes, and study genres into profound works that were both daring and deeply inward. Born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin to a French father and a Polish mother, probably on March 1, 1810, he was a native of Zelazowa Wola village west of Warsaw.

Franz Joseph Haydn is the composer who, more than any other, epitomizes the aims and achievements of the Classical era. Perhaps his most important achievement was that he developed and evolved the most influential structural principle in the history of music: his perfection of the set of expectations known as sonata form made an epochal impact. In hundreds of instrumental sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies, Haydn both broke new ground and provided durable models; indeed, he was among the creators of these fundamental genres of classical music. His influence upon later composers is immeasurable; Haydn's most illustrious pupil, Beethoven, was the direct beneficiary of the elder master's musical imagination, and Haydn's shadow lurks within (and sometimes looms over) the music of composers like Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.