Solo Piano

Recorded live in September 1987, this release features Florentins legendary complete survey of Rachmaninoffs solo piano works. an utterly mindblowing release of the complete Rachmaninoff solo piano music by Italian master pianist Sergio Fiorentino, to whom the piano world owes a huge debt of gratitude for coaxing the master out of retirement and ensuring that his last decade of concerts was recorded. In this set, we find in absolutely stunning sound quality Fiorentinos masterful traversals of Rachmaninoffs solo works, the golden sheen of his sound and refinement of his nuancing as captivating as his passionate and intelligent interpretations. (The Piano Files)

Jules Massenet - Stefan Irmer - Complete Solo Piano Works
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 249 MB | Full Artwork: 87 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG "Scene"# 618 1729-2 | Country/Year: Germany 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

"…Stefan Irmer has clearly studied and truly learned this music. So often on a disc of rarely performed music one gets the feeling that the pianist is sight-reading the notes in order to make a recording of previously unrecorded music. Not so here. Irmer performs with wonderful clarity, variety of tone, panache, and commitment. He truly sells the music.
Natural recorded sound, capturing very well the 1901 Steinway used for the recording, rounds out a delightful disc." ~Fanfare

Alkan's one of music's originals, a relatively neglected composer valued for his highly original, often visionary keyboard works accessible only to the most skilled virtuosos. Marc-André Hamelin certainly fills that bill and almost outdoes himself on this disc, playing with breathtaking virtuosity and imaginative insight. The Symphony for solo piano is just a four-movement work of symphonic scope and color. The Symphony was part of an even bigger work, the Opus 39 Études, whose 12 pieces include Alkan's best music. The three brief pieces that follow have strong attractions, deep spirituality prime among them. The final three pieces from his early Opus 15 set exemplify Alkan the Romantic. Again, Hamelin makes light of their technical difficulties, while shaping them sensitively. Notable are Le vent, where the right-hand runs make you hear the whistling wind and Morte, another powerful funeral march.

Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos has been known for high-powered Liszt performances and for gee-whiz transcriptions of works like Mozart's Rondo alla turca that seem to add an impossible collection of polyphonic lines to the music. All that could have been expected from this 2003 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, was another big, powerful interpretation to join the others already out there.

Howard Shelley is acclaimed as the living master of early Romantic piano music. So much of this music was ignored throughout the twentieth century that there is still a sense of discovery at each new recording. Shelley here presents the first instalment of a six-volume set of Mendelssohn’s complete solo piano music—perhaps the least well-known part of the composer’s repertoire.

Jules Massenet - Stefan Irmer - Complete Solo Piano Works
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 249 MB | Full Artwork: 87 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG "Scene"# 618 1729-2 | Country/Year: Germany 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

"…Stefan Irmer has clearly studied and truly learned this music. So often on a disc of rarely performed music one gets the feeling that the pianist is sight-reading the notes in order to make a recording of previously unrecorded music. Not so here. Irmer performs with wonderful clarity, variety of tone, panache, and commitment. He truly sells the music.
Natural recorded sound, capturing very well the 1901 Steinway used for the recording, rounds out a delightful disc." ~Fanfare

Currently a faculty member of the Washington Conservatory, Haskell Small received his musical training at the San Francisco Conservatory and Carnegie-Mellon University. He has studied piano with Leon Fleisher, William Masselos and Robert Sheldon and composition with Vincent Persichetti. His musical output is difficult to categorize. Nevertheless, it is clear that he is a throwback to the great composer/pianist tradition of the past …….