Rachmaninov Chopin

Yevgeny Sudbin's inquiring mind, unflappable fingers, and huge heart mesh with extraordinary concentration and intensity, resulting in some of the most carefully thought-through, powerfully projected, and fastidiously executed Rachmaninov interpretations I've ever heard. A few general comments equally pertain to all of the selections. In Sudbin's hands, inner voices aren't gently coaxed from the massive, orchestrally inspired textures for ear-catching effect, but instead emerge as integral and active components.

Paul Ji, winner of the Prodiges competition in 2019, is a 16-year old pianist, born in Chicago, USA to a Chinese family and raised in France since the age of five. This album, contains a selection of 16 romantic masterpieces for the piano.

This enthralling recital by the young American pianist George Li, silver medallist at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, marks his recording debut and launches a new relationship with Warner Classics. Captured at a live performance in the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St Petersburg, it presents a dramatically conceived programme of works by Haydn, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Liszt: a descent into deep darkness; re-emergence into the light, and a concluding, boisterous celebration.

Few pianists can claim such an extraordinary career and life as Ruth Slenczynska. She began performing in public at the age of 4, and, 92 years later, she is still playing. She studied with some of the 20th century's greatest pianists including Rachmaninoff, performed for Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan as well as Michelle Obama, and even played a duet with President Truman. For her new retrospective, My Life in Music, Slenczynska has chosen some of her favorite, most personal pieces.

Nikolai Lugansky has established an extraordinary reputation playing Chopin and Rachmaninov, actively performing works of both composers all over the world. This outstanding 9-CD boxed set includes many of Lugansky's most celebrated recordings, having garnered the Diapason d'Or for the complete Chopin Etudes in 2000, Rachmaninoff Preludes and Moments Musicaux in 2001 and Chopin Preludes in 2002, as well as his acclaimed first disc of Beethoven Sonatas that includes the "Moonlight" and "Appassionata".

The collection of Lang Lang’s Complete Recordings brings together the treasure-trove of recordings that present all the many facets of the pianist’s first decade as a recording artist from 2000–2009. The set also includes his solo and concerto debut albums on the Telarc label.

It was a clever idea to place all three of Rachmaninoff's large sets of variations on a single CD (in descending order of popularity and familiarity). The Paganini Rhapsody needs no introduction. The Corelli Variations are based on "La Folia," a theme used in several works from the Baroque period. Actually, the theme is from Portugal and not "of" Corelli at all, although Corelli made particularly good use of it in a composition of his own. When this fact was brought to Rachmaninoff's attention, he agreed to strike Corelli's name from the music's cover – but not from its title page! Nevertheless, the work has been known as the Corelli Variations ever since. The Chopin Variations are based on the C-minor Prelude from the Polish master's Op. 28 collection. This is the same prelude that Barry Manilow used as the basis of the song "Could it Be Magic?" in the 1970s.

Winning first prize at the 1989 Van Cliburn Competition, Alexei Sultanov enjoyed a meteoric rise of epic proportions, with a major recording contract, Carnegie Hall recital, American and European tours, and TV appearances with Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and other notables. But Sultanov's star soon fell to Earth as critics would often characterize his bold style in unflattering terms, finding his interpretive manner feral and superficial, and his herculean fortes ostentatious: he broke a string during a performance of the Liszt First Mephisto Waltz at the Cliburn Competition. But the youthful pianist's health soon proved a more formidable opponent than any critic's pen, as a series of strokes sabotaged his career, eventually leaving him paralyzed on his left side after 2001. Though he died at 35, Sultanov left a memorable though controversial legacy. His Prokofiev, Chopin, Rachmaninov, and Scriabin could rivet the listener, while his Beethoven and Mozart might have been less consistently engaging. His recordings, mostly available from Warner Classics, document the enormous talent of this imaginative performer, a pianist unafraid to take interpretive chances.

All of Rachmaninov’s music - from his earliest student compositions to his final masterpieces – has been collected together for the first time on 32 CDs, in what is definitively the most complete and comprehensive edition of Rachmaninov’s works ever released.