Alkan Piano Classics

A new recording of two major Reger cycles, by a fast-emerging British piano talent.

Roy Agnew (1891–1944) – one of few early-twentieth-century Australian composers to gain international success – wove many external influences into a warmly Romantic personal style of striking variety and wide appeal, and his compositions, largely for the piano, are startlingly virtuosic, harmonically daring and charmingly sentimental by turn. Beautifully written by a natural pianist for his own instrument, they often recall the virtuosic textures of Liszt and Skryabin and occasionally show flashes of the Impressionist colours of Debussy. This is the fifth album that Stephanie McCallum – Associate Professor in piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music – has recorded for Toccata Classics. The four earlier ones all focused on French composers: Alkan, Boëly and Ropartz. Now she turns her considerable talents to rescue a forgotten composer from her native Australia.

The three sets of Bagatelles (Opp. 33, 119 and 126) show Beethoven the improviser, a mind overflowing with ideas, experiments and jokes, but also capable of penning down the most tender and intimate miniatures, infinitely touching in their sincerity and deep feeling.

A little-known ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’ for the 19th century in a superbly engineered new version.

This monumental set dedicated to the Virtuoso Piano Étude offers a rewarding opportunity to witness two centuries in the evolution of masterpieces for the study of the piano. Composers have been challenging pianists with études for a long time. The practice of writing studies for the perfection of a particular pianistic technique developed in the 15th century, but the name ‘study’ or ‘étude’ only really came into its own in the 19th century with the rise in popularity of the piano as a domestic instrument.

Some of the most challenging keyboard music ever composed in a new recording of consummate artistry.

When they began playing together in 2017, Stefano Cardi and Enrico Pieranunzi went in search of repertoire which would harmonize with their disparate musical backgrounds, that of a classical guitarist with a passion for jazz and blues, and a jazz pianist with a thorough grounding in the classics. They turned quickly to America, both north and south, and found there a well-stocked but little-known library of pieces by composers who moved easily and skillfully between popular and classical idioms. This unique recital opens with one of Joplins best-known piano rags, The Easy Winners, and follows it with a pair of waltzes, also in arrangements for guitar and piano. Cardi and Pieranunzi then sail down to Buenos Aires for a trio of tangos by Joplins Argentinian contemporary, Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934).