Brendel Choice

As Alfred Brendel celebrates his 80th birthday on 5 January 2011, Decca is marking this momentous occasion with FOUR major catalogue releases. He’s a legend of the piano world, revered and applauded the world over. For long an exclusive Philips Classics artist, Alfred Brendel is the recipient of the 2010 Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award. Famed for his peerless interpretations of Viennese classics, 2011 sees Brendel celebrate his 80th birthday and for it we present four iconic sets – available at budget price for the first time. Next in the series of Decca’s ‘Artist’s Choice’, Alfred Brendel personally selects recordings that have been significant in his performance and recorded career. Including Bach’s Italian Concerto, Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures’, and Liszt’s ‘Légendes’, this beautifully packaged, 3CD hardcover book, comes with Brendel’s own, personal reminiscences. This limited edition product also includes several currently unavailable recordings.

As Alfred Brendel celebrates his 80th birthday on 5 January 2011, Decca is marking this momentous occasion with FOUR major catalogue releases. He’s a legend of the piano world, revered and applauded the world over. For long an exclusive Philips Classics artist, Alfred Brendel is the recipient of the 2010 Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award. Famed for his peerless interpretations of Viennese classics, 2011 sees Brendel celebrate his 80th birthday and for it we present four iconic sets – available at budget price for the first time. Next in the series of Decca’s ‘Artist’s Choice’, Alfred Brendel personally selects recordings that have been significant in his performance and recorded career. Including Bach’s Italian Concerto, Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures’, and Liszt’s ‘Légendes’, this beautifully packaged, 3CD hardcover book, comes with Brendel’s own, personal reminiscences. This limited edition product also includes several currently unavailable recordings.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s landmark series of Beethoven’s complete sonatas. Bavouzet has taken this programme to the most prestigious venues around the world and continues to perform it. Gramophone has nominated him several times for its Artist of the Year award, arguing that "Bavouzet’s chronological journey through the Beethoven sonatas has not been surpassed in the last 30 years. Yes, it’s that good."

Act III of François-Frédéric Guy's Beethoven Project. On the programme: Beethoven's complete music for cello and piano with cellist Xavier Phillips, recorded by Nicolas Bartholomée at the Arsenal in Metz. In 2008 Guy embarked on a major Beethoven project that has included recording and performing in concert all 32 Beethoven Sonatas and the 5 Piano Concertos. Guy is a dedicated chamber musician and he regularly performs Beethoven’s chamber music for strings and piano as well, with Tedi Papavrami and Xavier Phillips. As part of the Beethoven project, Guy has performed the complete cycle of 32 Sonatas in Washington, Paris, Monaco and recently at the Festival Berlioz in La Côte-Saint-André (August 2013). Born in Paris, Xavier Phillips started playing the cello at the age of 6. His encounter with Mstislav Rostropovitch proved especially fruitful since it marked the beginning of a long collaboration during which Xavier Phillips received the guidance and encouragement of the master cellist.

Angela Hewitt’s notes for this important new album describe a teenager’s moment of revelation when she first came to appreciate the epic masterpiece that is the Liszt Piano Sonata. Here we have a heart-felt recording where this palpable sense of wonder is manifest alongside Hewitt’s enthralling technical facility at the keyboard. The programme is completed by the second half of Liszt’s dazzling second Année de pèlerinage collection: the three Petrarch Sonnets and the noble Dante Sonata, the latter composed as a fund-raiser for the Bonn Beethoven monument in 1839.

In the latest chapter in András Schiff’s ongoing documentation of Franz Schubert’s music, the great pianist plays the Four Impromptus D 899, and compositions from 1828, the last year of Schubert’s too brief life: The Three Pieces D 946 (“impromptus in all but name” notes Misha Donat in the booklet), the C minor Sonata D 958 and the A major Sonata D 959. Schiff again chooses to use his fortepiano made by Franz Brodmann in Vienna, around 1820. “It is to me ideally suited to Schubert’s keyboard works,” he has said. “There is something quintessentially Viennese in its timbre, its tender mellowness, its melancholic cantabilità.”

In the latest chapter in András Schiff’s ongoing documentation of Franz Schubert’s music, the great pianist plays the Four Impromptus D 899, and compositions from 1828, the last year of Schubert’s too brief life: The Three Pieces D 946 (“impromptus in all but name” notes Misha Donat in the booklet), the C minor Sonata D 958 and the A major Sonata D 959. Schiff again chooses to use his fortepiano made by Franz Brodmann in Vienna, around 1820. “It is to me ideally suited to Schubert’s keyboard works,” he has said. “There is something quintessentially Viennese in its timbre, its tender mellowness, its melancholic cantabilità.

Vienna, Rome, Seoul… Iiro Rantala and Ulf Wakenius are musicians who travel the world, always on tour as leaders of their own projects. So it was something of a fluke that this duo was able to come into existence at all. The idea first emerged in October 2015, when Rantala and Wakenius stopped off at the Philharmonie in Berlin. Siggi Loch, curator of the “Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic” concert series, had brought them together on stage for the “Tears for Esbjörn” concert. “We were part of a larger ensemble on that occasion”, Rantala remembers, “but it was clear to both of us straight away that we would want to form a duo.” This has to be seen as a very smart move, given the rarity of the piano-guitar duo in jazz – a fine exception being that of Brad Mehldau with Pat Metheny.