Sonata Dante

The virtuoso pianist and exclusive Chandos artist Louis Lortie here performs all three books, or ‘Years’, of Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), a work rarely recorded in its entirety. Lortie has made more than thirty recordings for Chandos, covering a repertoire from Mozart to Stravinsky. His recording of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Variations won an Edison Award; his disc of works by Schumann and Brahms was judged one of the best CDs of the year by BBC Music, and his interpretations of Liszt’s complete works for piano and orchestra and of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas were both selected as Editor’s Choice in Gramophone.

This CD features music by composer Franz Liszt from the play "Tom & Jerry in the Garden of Earthly Delights." For this performance, pianist Martin Oei commissioned animations and videos to illustrate the life of Franz Liszt. Martin's goal is to introduce a younger audience to classical piano music and the remarkable role Liszt played in the 19th century.

Alessio Bax plays an Italian-inspired programme, picking his favourite pieces taken from a rich history of music from one of the most romantic countries in the world. He opens the programme with a J.S. Bach transcription of an oboe concerto by Venetian composer Alessandro Marcello, which reveals a deep insight into Bach’s mind.

Phillips' Great Pianists of the 20th Century issue has gotten a lot of publicity in the ten or so years since it has been released. In a musical niche suffering from falling revenues, it was a decent seller. But it left many connoisseurs disappointed, as the quality was limited to the fancy packaging.

Russia is vast, and so is this 25-disc tribute to the great piano school of Russia-from the long-famous icons to the more recent inheritors of this ineffably proud tradition. Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lazar Berman and many others display their subtly various approaches to phrasing and timbre as they perform the great works of the Russian canon and composers across Europe.

Iconic pianist Radu Lupu has been an exclusive DECCA artist for 40 years. This all-new collection brings together for the first time all of his published solo recordings for DECCA as an integral set. It features those composers with which Lupu's name has been so closely linked throughout his career and for which he has achieved worldwide acclaim: Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann.