Slavic Music

Awarded the title Young Steinway Artist in 2020, the Bulgarian pianist Marina Staneva received the 2019 Sam Hutchings Piano Prize and was a 2018 Britten-Pears Young Artist. She has been praised for her serious talent, outstanding musicianship, extraordinary instinctive artistry, and fine technical command. For this her début recording, she presents works by two contrasting Bulgarian composers. Pancho Vladigerov was arguably the most influential Bulgarian composer of all time. He was one of the first successfully to combine idioms of Bulgarian folk music and classical music. He was also among the founding members of the Bulgarian Contemporary Music Society (1933), which later became the Union of Bulgarian Composers. The British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova studied composition under Simon Bainbridge, Diana Burrell, Robert Keeley, and Andrew Schul tz. Her composition Praise was sung at St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, and she has received commissions from the Royal Philharmonic Society, BBC Radio 3, Cheltenham Music Festival, Britten Sinfonia, Three Choirs Festival, Wigmore Hall, and, in 2014, the PRS Foundation's first UK New Music Biennial.

Cellist Fernando Arias and pianist Noelia Rodiles team up for this recording, portraying 30 years of Slavic masterpieces for this combination: From the still neglected Dohnányi’s Sonata, op.8 to one of 20th Century’s chamber music masterpieces: Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata op. 40. Intense and brilliant performances in this album which also includes Janacek’s gem “Pohadka”.

Hania Rani announces ‘Music for Film and Theatre’ a personal selection of recent compositions for film, theatre and other projects.

This substantial 25CD set offers a fascinating journey through one century of Russian Chamber Music. All Russian composers were active in this genre and often composed their most profound, personal music for it.

This album features the complete works for flute (to date) by Franco-Ukranian composer Dimitri Tchesnokov (b.1982), with the exception of his flute trio Tableaux feìeìriques. This programme is supplemented by some of Tchesnokov’s piano solos in a comparable style. The pieces presented here offer a contrast to the composer’s religious/mystical music (3 Chants sacreìs, Requiem, Ave Verum) and his historic/realistic works (Symphonie archaïque, Château de Grandval, Symphonie Ukrainienne).