Traumerei Schumann

Thibaut Garcia pays tribute with El Bohemio to the Paraguayan guitar virtuoso and composer Agustín Barrios (1885-1944). As Garcia explains, “Barrios is an essential composer in the guitarist’s repertoire. His music can be described as a skilful mix of South American popular music – inspired by the jungles of Paraguay – and the Romanticism of Chopin and Schumann, composers he idolised.” El Bohemio duly complements 16 varied works by Barrios himself with three of his transcriptions of famous pieces by Chopin, Schumann, and Beethoven. In addition, the album includes readings of two of Barrios’s poems: ‘Bohemio’, which lends the album its name, portrays the composer as a wandering troubadour; ‘Profesión de fé’ (Profession of faith) honours the Guarani, the indigenous people of Paraquay.

In front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Pudong Art Museum, Gina Alice, who was just over 27 years old, and her husband played Brahms' Hungarian Dance with their four hands.

Víkingur Ólafsson’s latest album, From Afar, was met with widespread acclaim, praised for its evocative and contemplative beauty. Recorded on both upright and grand pianos, From Afar reflects on the pianist’s childhood memories in Iceland and features works by Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, Bartók, Thomas Adès and György Kurtág, alongside Icelandic and Hungarian folk songs.

Markus Kaufmann's debut album as organist at Leipzig's Nikolaikirche tells stories of love with pieces by composers such as Edward Elgar, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann and Edvard Grieg. Each of the pieces describes the love and emotions of its creator in its own way: be it the "Salut d'amour", which Elgar dedicated to his piano student and later wife Caroline Alice, or Liszt's "Liebestraum" on a passionate poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath, in which love determines life and death. Markus Kaufmann skilfully brings all these facets of love to life on the Ladegast-Eule organ.

Guitarist Gene Bertoncini is a consummate virtuoso instrumentalist and a musician who possesses an extraordinary ability to emotionally connect to every composition he performs. There's nothing jagged about Quiet Now, but Bertoncini's refined imagination and allegiance to a song's melody makes for an experience that is never less than fulfilling. Rich without being overpoweringly lush, sweet without being saccharine, sentimental without being maudlin, Quiet Now's title says it all.

"From Afar" is a new album full of beautiful arrangements recorded on two pianos with the repertoire mirrored on both grand piano and upright piano.

In 2019, I began to think about making concept albums. Of all the ideas I developed, one of the most potent was that of collating works that we would like to listen to in the morning and evening. This was the sentiment behind the creation of the albums Morning and Evening.

Maryla Jonas, Polish-born concert pianist, made her debut as a child prodigy in Warsaw at the age of 9 and became a pupil of Ignacy Jan Paderewski. She won an International Chopin Prize in 1922 and the Beethoven Prize of Vienna the next year. She was in bombed-out Warsaw when it was captured by the Nazis, but escaped in 1940, a feat that was described later as "miraculous." Walking day and night, she traveled 325 miles to the Brazilian Embassy in Berlin. From there, Jonas went to Rio de Janeiro, where her married sister, Mrs. Bertha Holin, then lived, and entered a sanitarium.

This album is a kind of poetic compendium, made up of short pieces reflecting a soothing universe blending Berceuses, Nocturnes, Rêveries and Chants du soir.