Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky completed his last set of piano pieces about six months before his death. Each bears a dedication to a friend or colleague including distinguished musicians such as Paul Pabst, Vasily Sapelnikov and Vasily Safonov. The 18 pieces are no mere salon effusions; rather they are richly characterised, sometimes virtuosic, and perfectly crafted miniatures. Schumann and Chopin are deliberately evoked, the music embracing a rich variety of dance, melancholy, fantasy and bravura. The set is played by the brilliant young prizewinner of the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2008, Konstantin Shamray.

Flash is Claire’s second recording for Tall Poppies - a charming compilation of miniatures for the marimba. Inspired by her formative musical years as a pianist and her two young daughters, Claire has chosen a program of new and transcribed gems for the mellow sonorities of the grand five octave marimba. The Australian works have, in the most part, been written especially for the project, and these sit cheek-by-jowl with transcriptions of well-known children’s piano pieces by Bach, Bartók, Corea, Kabalevsky, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. New works for the marimba have been written by Claire’s long-term friends and collaborators Elena Kats-Chernin, Stuart Greenbaum, Andrea Keller, Daniel Rojas and Matthew Hindson - their works are true gifts to Claire, marimba players of the future and future listeners of this CD.

By the time he made these recordings, all three of the sonatas had been in Sviatoslav Richter’s repertory for years. He had first performed Tchaikovsky’s Sonata in G major in 1942, recording it in Moscow in 1956. His recordings of the music of Prokofiev are the stuff of legend. He had just four days to learn the Seventh Sonata for its first performance in early 1943. Richter spoke of the work reflecting ‘murderous forces unleashed’ and his 1958 recording is a graphic realisation of the sentiment. The Ninth Sonata was dedicated to him and its ‘radiant, simple, even intimate’ quality is here perfectly realised.

Reissue producer and audio restoration engineer: Ward Marston.

This release features a new and exciting version of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 which is a premiere recording. World famous pianist Tzimon Barto and his pianist colleague and conductor Christoph Eschenbach have worked together on this project. After the final concert of this version at the Berlin Philharmonie, both the audience and the press were very enthusiastic.