Piano Instrumental

Outshined by opera, which ruled the fates of music in nineteenth-century Italy, many musicians – both composers and performers – devoted their energies to instrumental music. One famous representative of this group was Stefano Golinelli (Bologna, 1818-1891), a composer, pianist and pedagogue who attracted lively attention both in Italy and abroad.

Though classically trained, pianist Jim Brickman prefers to play more pop-flavored, gently lyrical new age music. His unique compositions are emotional and structured, but not rigidly so. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Brickman enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Music in his late teens. The focus was on classical music, but Brickman could not escape the lure of mainstream music, and at age 19 began writing commercial jingles. This led him to compose music for such major outfits the Gap, Isuzu, Sprint, and Kellogg's as well as with Jim Henson and Henson Associates. During his association with Henson, he composed for the Muppets and for projects on Sesame Street. He also assisted on some of Henson's Disney projects.

One of the founding artists of the new age piano genre, David Lanz, and the ultra-gifted vocalist Kristin Amarie, collaborate on a welcome addition to the holiday music canon, Forever Christmas. The duo are joined on the album by some talented guest stars: Eric Tingstad (guitar), Nancy Rumbel (woodwinds), Walter Gray (cello), Gary Lanz (guitar), Keith Lowe (bass), and Alonzo Davideo (guitar), although piano clearly dominates the recording. Eleven of the album's fourteen tracks are originals–unusual for a Christmas album but also a welcome change from the norm in this genre.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s vivid and personal interpretations of Debussy’s complete works for piano are available for the first time in an attractive five-volume set, this is the series that put Bavouzet on the map, and established him firmly as a leading and internationally acclaimed pianist.

The death of Henri Dutilleux on 22 May 2013 robbed the musical world of one of its most distinctive voices. Dutilleux was renowned for his exquisite craftsmanship and feel for instrumental colour, as well as for an extraordinary generosity of spirit that was invariably reflected in his music. Indeed, pianist Akanè Makita describes Dutilleux as a 'generous, sensitive man' who, when the artists involved in this recording wrote to him to tell him about the project, replied to say how 'greatly touched' and 'moved' he was. This warm and unexpected response from such an eminent composer inspired the musicians to put their all into the recording; the fact that it was completed on the day of Dutilleux's death makes it all the more fitting a tribute to him. The chamber works featured on this disc demonstrate Dutilleux's superb command of instrumental timbre – as flautist Andrea Oliva says, 'Dutilleux is brilliant at custom-designing the music to suit the specific characteristics of each instrument'. These are highly demanding pieces that exploit the possibilities of the instruments to the full – all can be considered milestones in the repertoire of their respective instruments.

Young Ukrainian pianist Tetiana Shafran is the First Prize Winner of the 2019 Olga Kern Competition. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Tetiana Shafran started playing piano at the age of 3. She graduated from the Lysenko Special Music School and the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine where she studied with Andriy Vasin and the Oxana Yablonskaya Piano Academy where she studied with Professor Yablonskaya. Tetiana is the prize-winner of about 25 International piano competitions: For her debut album on the Steinway & Sons label, she performs a beguiling program of music by Chopin, Ravel, and Mikhail Pletnev's brilliant arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty.

Recorded in Salzburg on August 10, 1993, this recording documents a portrait concert devoted to the music of György Kurtág that spans most of his career, from his Op. 1, first string quartet, written when he was in his forties, to works of recent years. The performers are a star-studded gallery of mostly-Hungarian musicians, many closely associated with Kurtág's music, including the pianist Zoltan Kocsis, the soprano Adrienne Csengery, the Keller Quartet, the cellist Miklos Perenyi and the composer-conductor Peter Eötvös.