Bach Beethoven

Maria João Pires “shapes and colours every phrase, and with immaculate taste, and she makes sure the phrases end as eloquently as they begin,” wrote Gramophone in 1974. “She conveys not just the details but the relevance of every note to the whole … Best of all, she communicates everything she has discovered about the music, and it is worth having.” This Portuguese pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, Pires was one of the artists who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 5-CD box gathers together the recordings she made over the period from 1976 to 1985 and it reflects the consistent focus of her repertoire, with its special emphasis on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets and concertos, it contains works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, but also by Bach and Chopin.

The French pianist Lucas Debargue was a Tchaikovsky Competition sensation in 2015 (although he did not win), and this studio debut gives you a good idea of what the fuss was about. Debargue offers the French tradition in all its calmly urbane glory. You might like various aspects of this release: the unapologetically pianistic but flawlessly elegant Bach Toccata, the Medtner Sonata in F minor, Op. 5. You might sample one of the movements of the latter, inasmuch as the preponderance of recordings of Medtner's solo piano music tends to favor the thunder and lightning of Marc-André Hamelin, for example.

When it rains, it pours. In our last issue, I raved about a new recording of this curious and rarely heard version of Beethoven's well-known violin concerto—please refer to that issue for details and for a recapitulation of the major recordings of the piece from the early days of the long-playing record. Now here it is again, in a much more fleet reading by the brilliant young Finnish pianist and composer (his own music may be sampled on Finlandia's Portrait of Olli Mustonen and a radiant-sounding, closely miked Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. The two new recordings complement each other nicely.

Since his first release for Virgin Classics, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations in 2000, Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski’s has produced a catalogue which ranges from Bach and Mozart, through more Beethoven to Chopin, Szymanowski and Webern, and which includes several prizewinning recordings.

Ron Adelaar is a Dutch-based pianist and composer of neoclassical, meditative piano compositions. Besides that he is A&R manager at Andante Piano, sublabel of Disruptive Records run by his son Ivo Adelaar. Ron had an early introduction to piano music, as he started his career at the age of 13 by playing the organ and piano at several churches in his hometown Amersfoort (The Netherlands), all together with his father Ton Adelaar who played the flute. After that, and now for already 37 years, Ron is a pianist and conductor of a choir in Amersfoort. His passion has always been to create his own contemporary compositions and share it with others. Because of the technical possibilities these days he’s finally able to share his own piano compositions with the rest of the world, all recorded in his home piano studio. Ron’s neoclassical piano compositions contribute to relax, meditate or to maintain concentration and focus during work.

Maurizio Pollini is an Italian pianist. He is known for performances of compositions by Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy, among others. He has also championed and performed works by contemporary composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, Roberto Carnevale, Gianluca Cascioli and Bruno Maderna. Works composed for him include Luigi Nono's … sofferte onde serene …, Giacomo Manzoni's Masse: omaggio a Edgard Varèse and Salvatore Sciarrino's Fifth Sonata.

Bach's gamba sonatas, not as famous as his solo-cello suites, receive an audaciously imaginative presentation on an 18th-century violoncello piccolo that captures the extraordinary beauties of the music as few others have done. The resulting flow of music, as if the sonatas and their curious companions (arrangements of other Bach) were one continuous reflection, is hypnotic in its appeal. The lighter, more agile tones of the violoncello piccolo, meanwhile, make what often sounds dense on the modern cello fantastic and poetical by turns.