Robert Schumann

The works on For The Piano reveal a musical instinct mature beyond his years. Fiachra selected Samuel Barber’s bravura Piano Sonata and his elegiac Nocturne dedicated to John Field to bookend the two central works which are complementary highlights of the 19th and 20th century piano repertoire: Debussy’s Pour le Piano and Schumann’s Fantasiestucke.

The latter is a suite of eight pieces that tentatively relates to the Hero and Leander legend but more fundamentally is among the composer’s finest and most moving works for piano.

Fiachra Garvey is the top Irish prize winner at the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition. Fiachra was the recipient of the “Rising Star” award from the National Concert Hall, Dublin where he gave his debut main auditorium recital in 2011.

Very few great conductors were able to polarise the concert scene like the Romanian-born Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996). He hated marketing in all of its forms, and with the exception of Wilhelm Furtwängler, was disparaging of his more famous fellow conductors, including Herbert von Karajan and Arturo Toscanini. He also loathed going into the studio, so most recordings illustrating his astounding talents as a conductor are of concert performances.

The recordings featured in this 10-CD set were made between 1945 and 1963, and are mainly live broadcasts given with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Berlin and Cologne, and a number of Italian radio orchestras. The repertoire ranges widely - from the English baroque of Purcell through Viennese Classicism of Mozart to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Strauss. The compilation also features several popular works from the 20th century (Ravel, Gershwin and Samuel Barber for instance), plus music by Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling and Harald Genzmer associated with the German avant-garde. The least-known pieces are undoubtedly orchestral works of Heinz Thiessen (1887-1971), Celibidache’s composition teacher, to whom a full disc is devoted.

Bryn Terfel is one of Britain’s best-loved singers, as comfortable in popular musical repertoire as he is in the great roles of opera. Ahead of his curated BrynFest appearances at London’s Southbank Centre, and his career-defining role as Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera House this autumn, Deutsche Grammophon is proud to release this 2CD career retrospective.

There has been a recent revival of interest in the music of Rheinberger.

Here the excellent young voices of the EuropaChorAkademie perform some of his lesser known works for choir and piano.

They also include Schumann’s Zigeurnerleben Op.29 No.3 and Brahms’ Sieben Lieder Op.62.

This CD includes two of Schumann’s greatest orchestral compositions together with the lesser known “Nachtlied”.

The SWR Vokalensemble bring their skills to Schumann’s moody choral work.

This renowned choir has won many recording prizes.

These two young musicians have won all sorts of awards, ranging from the prize of the Concours Rostropovich for cellist Norbert Anger to the first prize and audience prize of the Steinway Piano Competition for Nicolai Gerassimez. They became acquainted as prize winners of the German Music Competition and discovered their shared love of chamber music. As the Duo Anger-Gerassimez, they show the colorful variety of the combination cello/piano on their debut CD. They succeed superbly in rendering Brahms with pathos, Debussy with a playful quality and Piazzolla erotically. In so doing, the two young talents do not shy away from experimentation, either: in the Grand Tango of Piazzolla, the cello sounds like an electric guitar thanks to a special sound effect. A must for open minds and ears!

This collection is a well conceived tribute to the romantic lied of the 19th century.

Included are lieder and duets by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.

The collection demonstrates the mastery which Alois Mühlbacher and the St. Florian Boys’ Choir have gained in this field.

Alexandra Dariescu makes her debut recording for Champs Hill Records in a recital of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. A hugely popular communicator, Alexandra is a former YCAT

artist, a Laureate of the Verbier Academy and has been awarded the Romanian Ambassador’s prize All three composers on this album contributed to the foundations and development of Romantic piano composition, and this set of works forms one of Alexandra’s most popular piano recital programmes.

Schumann published his Opus 1, Variations on the name Abegg at just 20 years old, playfully translating the last name of the dedicatee - Mademoiselle Pauline Comtesse d’Abegg - into musical pitches [A-Bb-E-G-G] from which his theme begins. Of the three composers here, Liszt became the most idolized pianist-composer of the nineteenth century. His Ballade No. 2 in B minor recalls works by Chopin and Schubert, while his transcription from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, demonstrates his influence by the composers he admired.

Chopin’s Grande Polonaise was originally written for piano and orchestra and was premiered coupled with the opening Andante Spianato: but two years later Chopin re-arranged the work for piano solo, which we hear here. Also featured on the disc is Chopin’s Ballade No. 4, Op. 52, one of his most profound compositions. Chopin wrote this melancholy masterpiece at a time when he was in a state of precarious health.

This season, Alexandra made her Carnegie Hall debut in New York and appears in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing both Rachmaninov and Greig concertos.

Born in Romania, Alexandra subsequently studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, completing further studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where was made a Piano Fellow.