The Romantic Piano Concerto 79

The first chapter of an exciting new recording project. The portrait of a master composer at the top of his game. Exploring two of the most remarkable, creative and game-changing years in music history: 1785 & 1786.

In 2019, Alexandre and Jean-Jacques Kantorow’s recording of the last three piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns earned the highest praise around the world, including a Diapason d’or de l’année, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and top marks and recommendations from the leading German web sites Klassik Heute and Klassik.com. The Kantorows’ orchestra of choice was the Finnish ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, and they have now returned to Helsinki to record not only Saint-Saëns’ first two concertos, but all of the remaining works for piano and orchestra.

Pianist Lise de la Salle has a big tone and a strong technique, but while she is surely up to the technical requirements of Prokofiev's and Shostakovich's first piano concertos, she seems out of her depth in their interpretive demands. She can pound her way through the muscular rhythms and massive sonorities in the outer movements of Prokofiev's concerto but appears immune to the lyrical poetry in the legato lines of the work's central Andante assai.

The Szell/Cleveland Recordings Complete! In the heyday of George Szell s tenure as its chief conductor, declared Gramophone, The Cleveland Orchestra had few if any peers among the world s great orchestras. Coinciding with the orchestra s centenary in 2018, Sony Classical is excited to announce one of the most ambitious reissue projects of recent times, a comprehensive collection of the Clevelanders recordings made under the baton of their iconic fourth music director. These span the period between 1947 a year after Szell (born in Budapest in 1897) inherited a fine provincial orchestra from Erich Leinsdorf and began transforming it into the elite ensemble it remains to this day and 1969, a year before his sudden death shocked the musical world. Szell's dream was to create an ensemble that combined the Americans purity and beauty of sound and their virtuosity of execution with the European sense of tradition, warmth of expression and sense of style, in the words of his biographer Michael Charry.

With her refined, honest artistry, the Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires - who turns 70 in July 2014 - is one of the musicians who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 17-CD box presents all the recordings she made between 1972 and 1987. Reflecting the consistent focus of her repertoire, this box set's emphasis is on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets, and concertos, this release contains works by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven, as well as by Bach and Chopin.

Philippe Herreweghe directs these Schumann concertos with severity and urgency, with an impact that’s particularly strong in the opening movement of the A minor piano concerto. The soloist is Andreas Staier, who plays a mid-19th century J.B. Streicher instrument. But it’s not just the use of period instruments (this is certainly the kind of piano Schumann would have known) that proves so fascinating here; rather, it’s the minutely detailed way in which soloist and conductor interact during this performance. Note, for instance, how astutely Herreweghe’s wind players articulate the sorrowful first subject group after the soloist’s opening salvo, a passage that sets the tone for all that follows.

A comprehensive survey of classical music - for the casual listener, this might be all the classical music you need in your collection; for others this provides a starting point for further exploration. Unlike many collections of this sort, most of these 30 discs contain performances by some of biggest names in classical music. Included are: Bach's Complete Brandenburg Concertos; Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons"; Beethoven's Symphonies 5 and 9, plus the Piano Concertos #4 and 5; Symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Mahler and Brahms; concertos by Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Mendelssohn; music by Ravel, Handel, Gershwin, Debussy, Moussorgsky.

The album “Aufgelebt” is all about revival, rebirth and recreation, the promise of new beginnings. Beethoven worked on his Piano Concerto No. 4 and the Op. 61a (piano version of a violin concerto) in the same period of his life. Both concertos were neglected and would have been forgotten had it not been for the attention of Felix Mendelssohn, who revived the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1836 and conducted the violin concerto, in 1844. Since then, these two concertos have been considered to be masterpieces of classical music literature. The Violin Concerto had yet another chance of rebirth long before young Joachim’s success. After attending the premier of the piece, Muzio Clementi asked Beethoven to transcribe the work for piano and orchestra. His wish was promptly fulfilled by the composer, who at the same time enriched the Concerto with authentic cadenzas, of which the first - in the First Movement - is very special as the piano is accompanied by timpani!

Beyond their brilliant virtuosity and craftsmanship, Camille Saint-Saëns’s epic Piano Concerto No. 2 and irresistibly exotic No.5 (‘Egyptian’) invite listeners on a riveting and richly imaginative journey. Hailed ‘the new French prince of the piano’ (Diapason), Bertrand Chamayou also reveals a more intimate side to the great composer-pianist, exploring the hidden charm and secret sensuality of his rarely-heard etudes and solo piano miniatures.