LEONE SINIGAGLIA
Sinigaglia: Music for Violin and Piano Alessandra Génot (violin), Massimiliano Génot (piano) & Carlo Negro (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 10/Dec/2015 ] Leone Sinigaglia (1868 ‐ 1944) was a cosmopolitan intellectual, who lived in Germany, Tchechoslowakia, where he formed close friendships with Johannes Brahms and Antonin Dvořák respectively. Of Jewish origin he died under Nazi terror in his native... |
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Kashchey the Immortal (complete opera) Alexander Arkhipov, Irina Zhurina, Nina Terentieva, Vladislav Verestnikov / Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra & Yurlov Academic Choir, Andrey Chistiakov [ Brilliant Classics Opera Collection / CD - released 22/Jul/2013 ] By 1901 Nikolai Rimsky‐Korsakov had already been a professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory for thirty years and had achieved considerable renown as a composer. |
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Britten: Complete Music for Cello & Piano Alexander Ivashkin (cello) Andrew Zolinsky (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / 2 CD - released 10/Jan/2014 ] This set contains the complete music for cello solo, cello and piano and offers a world premiere, the cello sonata in A major, a charming piece in Schubertian style, written by the 13‐year old Benjamin. Britten's friendship with the great Russian... |
SERGEI PROKOFIEV / SERGEI RACHMANINOV
Rachmaninoff & Prokofiev: Cello Sonatas Alexander Russakovsky (cello) & Amber Shay Nicholson (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 22/Feb/2016 ] This new recording (recorded in 2012) brings together two great, but altogether different 20th century Cello Sonatas from Russia: the gorgeous and deeply romantic cello sonata by Rachmaninoff, of near‐symphonic proportions, and the cello sonata by... |
MUSSORGSKY
Pictures at an Exhibition (piano version) [with Tchaikovsky - The Seasons] Alexander Warenberg (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 20/Oct/2008 ] |
MUSSORGSKY
Pictures at an Exhibition Alexander Warenberg (piano) / Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Igor Markevitch [ Brilliant Classics / 2 CD - released 30/Nov/2014 ] Ravel's orchestration of Pictures, performed with freshness and vision by Markevitch and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. |
BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonatas Nos. 8, 14 & 23 [recorded 1962-64] Alfred Brendel (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 20/Sep/2009 ] 'The playing is very deeply committed, very intense, but never ponderously philosophical' Gramophone |
CARL HEINRICH REINECKE
Reinecke: Complete Cello Sonatas Ana Turkalj (cello), Aleck Carratta (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 1/Apr/2022 ] The fundamentally Romantic idiom of Carl Reinecke coexists with the twilight of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th century. He was a precocious and prolific composer, who wrote music from an early age after his birth in the North German town... |
GLASS / KANCHELI / TUUR
Music for Violin & Piano Andrea Cortesi (violin) Marco Ventur (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 20/Aug/2014 ] The reissue of one of the gems from the famous VOX catalogue: the complete Saint-Saëns Piano Concertos played by Gabriel Tacchino and the Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg, conducted by maitre Louis de Froment. |
GIYA KANCHELI
Miniatures for Violin and Piano Andrea Cortesi (violin) & Marco Venturi (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 1/Dec/2016 ] Any album of music by the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli is eagerly awaited by a wide audience receptive to his particular, post-Soviet voice, which has touched the hearts and minds of many thousands of listeners through his music for both film and... |
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Schumann: Violin Sonatas Andrea Cortesi (violin) & Marco Venturi (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 22/Feb/2016 ] These wonderful violin sonatas, written a few years before his death in an asylum, belie the dictum that "Schumann started as a genius, and ended as a talent". These are works by a passionate genius, highly original, full of feverish energy,... |
ALFREDO CASELLA
Casella: Complete Music for Cello and Piano Andrea Favalessa (cello) Maria Semeraro (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 1/Apr/2014 ] Casella was, if it isn't a contradiction in terms, a kind of neoclassical Romantic; of sufficient pianistic skill that he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 13 and thus perhaps escaped from the pressure to plough the furrow of... |
RICHARD STRAUSS / LUDWIG THUILLE
R. Strauss & Thuille: Cello Sonatas Andrea Favalessa (cello) & Maria Semeraro (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 24/Feb/2017 ] Between Richard Strauss and Ludwig Thuille (born in 1864 and 1861 respectively) existed a strong friendship and mutual respect. Their two youthful cello sonatas share the same idiom: passionate and lateromantic soaring themes, a profound lyricism and... |
MARCO lo MUSCIO
Andrea Padova plays lo Muscio Andrea Padova (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 12/Jul/2019 ] Born in 1971, Marco lo Muscio is an organist, pianist and composer who has performed on the great organs of Europe and the US. His own music been performed by the likes of Christopher Herrick, Thomas Trotter and David Briggs. This album focuses on... |
SERGEI RACHMANINOV
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto Nos. 2 & 3 Anna Federova (piano) / Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Laërcio Diniz & Gerard Oskamp [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 12/Apr/2024 ] The Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova is renowned for her playing of Rachmaninoff, and in particular the four concertos which she has performed across the world. She made these recordings in 2014, at a relatively early stage in her career. |
VARIOUS COMPOSERS
Short Cuts: 50 Piano Pieces Antonio Ballista (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / 2 CD - released 4/Dec/2020 ] A special and intriguing concept: ultra-short (one minute plus) piano pieces by 50 composers, encompassing 3 centuries, starting with Rameau and ending with Sciarrino, Crumb, Ligeti and Berio. Much can be said with few words, and so much can be... |
GRIEG
Peer Gynt Suites / Lyric Pieces Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Mark Ermler / Håkon Austbø (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 20/May/2015 ] The composer Edvard Grieg was at the forefront of a flourishing of creativity that took place in Scandinavian culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, alongside his contemporaries, Nielsen and Sibelius. His imagination was particularly... |
HUMMEL
Piano Septets Aya Okuyama (fortepiano), Allessandro Commellato (fortepiano) / Solamente Naturali, Bratislava [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 1/Dec/2010 ] Johann Nepomuk Hummel has lived for a long time in the shadow of Beethoven. Only in recent years has his true importance become apparent: a dramatic style, a great sense of musical structure and craftsmanship, alternating drama and charm. |
ALEXANDER ZEMLINSKY
Zemlinsky: Lieder Barbara Bonney (soprano) Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo) Hans Peter Blochwitz (tenor) Andreas Schmidt (baritone) Cord Garben (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / 2 CD - released 10/May/2009 ] 'The casting is, almost without exception, sensitive and revelatory.' Gramophone |
SAINT-SAENS
Romances Sans Paroles: songs transcribed for oboe & piano Bart Schneeman (oboe) Paolo Giacometti (piano) [ Brilliant Classics / CD - released 20/Mar/2012 ] |