Frédéric François Chopin

2 CD & DVD.

Lang Lang’s first recording for Sony, the start of a new exclusive long-term partnership - recorded live at Vienna’s prestigious Musikverein in 2010.

Lang Lang:

Heralded as the “hottest artist on the classical music planet” by the New York Times, 28- year-old Lang Lang began playing the piano at the age of 3, gave his first public recital aged 5, and won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians Competition at the age of 13. Since then he has become a global phenomenon, playing sold out recitals and concerts in every major city in the world.

Testimony to his success, Lang Lang recently appeared in the 2009 Time 100 – Time Magazine's annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2008, over 5 billion people viewed Lang Lang’s performance in Beijing’s opening ceremony for the Olympic Games, and he has inspired over 40 million Chinese children to take up the piano – a phenomenon coined by The Today Show as "the Lang Lang effect." More recently, Lang Lang was chosen as an official worldwide ambassador to the 2010 Shanghai Expo. He has performed at prestigious events including at The White House and The Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony.

Continuing his presence on the world stage, Lang Lang was featured at the 2008 Grammy Awards and the 2009 Classical Brit Awards, pairing up with jazz great, Herbie Hancock, for an astounding performance that was broadcast live to 45 million viewers worldwide.

Lang Lang has made it his mission to share classical music around the world, with an emphasis on training children and young musicians through education, outreach programs, master classes and financial support. He launched the Lang Lang International Music Foundation in New York with the support of UNICEF. In May 2009, Lang Lang and his three chosen young scholars from the foundation performed together on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

In addition to his numerous commitments, Lang Lang holds the title of the first Ambassador of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. His role in this groundbreaking project created by YouTube and Google reflects his devotion to building new audiences and bringing classical music to young people worldwide. A brand in himself, Lang Lang has become the face of numerous global campaigns. Steinway has created five versions of the “Lang Lang Steinway” designed for early music education - the first time in Steinway’s 150-year history that an artist’s name has been used to produce pianos. He is a global brand ambassador for the entire Sony Corporation, including its Electronics arm, with whom he anticipates achieving innovative and creative possibilities for the future. Lang Lang also holds brand partnerships with Audi Automobiles and Aegon's worldwide financial services, amongst others.Lang Lang’s performance clothes are provided by Versace.

In February 2010, Lang Lang joined Sony Music Entertainment as an exclusive recording artist.

Born in 1941, and currently chief conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, Christoph Eschenbach is one of today’s foremost conductor-pianists. This fascinating retrospective focuses on his brilliant early career as a pianist, when his searching musical intelligence, formidable technique and enthusiastic engagement with the music of his, and our, time produced many recordings that have stood the test of time.

Ates Orga’s detailed booklet notes offer a personal account from the man himself of his troubled start in life as an orphan, without the power of speech, learning to love and communicate through music. His quite fierce style is shaped by his admiration of great German intellectual musicians such as Edwin Fischer and Wilhelm Furtwängler, and finds an ideal analogue in the works of Beethoven, such as the Third and Fifth Piano Concertos, and the mighty ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata included in this set. Equally his refinement, evident nowadays in the French music he conducts in Paris and in his recordings with the Philadelphia orchestra, is reflected in his early portrayals of the romantic genius of Chopin (the Préludes) and Schumann (Kinderszenen).

His long friendship with Hans Werner Henze led the great German composer to write the Piano Concerto No.2 for Eschenbach, and this vast, Shakespeare-inspired work remains Henze at his boldest and most compelling, like Eschenbach himself, soaked in the German artistic tradition but finding new outgrowths from it.

Of appeal to connoisseurs of the piano and to new-music enthusiasts Will receive coverage in the serious musical press.

New coupling: no comparable set available

The latest release in this very well received series features the chamber works of Chopin. Broja has won many awards and has been acclaimed in the major concert halls of Eastern Europe. Bauer is also a prize winner and won a scholarship to study with William Pleeth.

Anika Vavić has performed in the some of the world’s most established concert halls including Carnegie Hall, the Wigmore Hall and the Concertgebouw. She has worked with conductors such as Valery Gergiev and Paavo Järvi. Her other great passion is literature and she has written a novel.

This anniversary collection by Jeunesses Musicales marks 60 years of service to the young: 60 years of excellence. The compilation presents some of the best recordings made at ANALEKTA by artists who toured under the aegis of JMC or have been associated with the Montreal International Musical Competition, founded in 2002. Discover some of the great performers of the Canadian music scene.

These performances by some of the world’s best known pianists are all live recordings from the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.