Rachmaninov: Prelude Op. 32 No. 10 in B minor

Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Valentina began playing the piano at the age of three and performed her first solo recital just one year later. She has won prestigious awards for her playing internationally, including the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition (together with her husband Alexei Kuznetsoff).

Valentina Lisitsa has already performed at major international venues including Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York and the Vienna Musikverein, and in countries as far apart as the Netherlands and Brazil. She has played with renowned orchestras including Chicago Symphony, Seattle Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony, collaborating with conductors Manfred Honeck, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, among others. Upcoming performances are confirmed with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Philharmonie im Gasteig, Munich with Münchner Symphoniker and recitals at the Victoria Hall in Geneva and Philharmonie in Berlin.

With more than 43 million views and over 52,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, the young pianist is not only one of the fastest-rising stars of the international concert scene but probably the single most-watched classical musician, having rapidly overtaken long-established giants of the piano world in terms of global online viewing figures.

The premiere disc from this remarkable young Chinese-American pianist and composer. Features music by Rachmaninov and Ravel, as well as compositions by Conrad himself, including an inspired work for iPad and piano. Also a work by New York born composer, Meredith Monk.

Conrad describes this album as being “about iridescence, about color, shifting, Perception, hallucinatory shapes”.

“He is exceptionally gifted, and an 18 year old teenager of the digital era. Quite a catch for the future.” Jean Philippe Rolland, President of A&R, EMI Classics

This CD is the third release from Challenge Classics to showcase the talents of the Russian pianist Alexei Volodin. It features a wide ranging selection of pieces by his compatriot Sergei Rachmaninov, including the “Variations on a theme of Corelli”, 5 of his Preludes, the 2nd Sonata (second version), and four of his Etudes-Tableaux.

Alexei Volodin was born in St. Petersburg in 1977, and began taking piano lessons there at the age of nine. A year later he moved to Moscow, and in 1994 he enrolled at the Moscow Conservatoire. During 2001 and 2002 he studied at the Theo Lieven International Piano Foundation in Como. He has won several prizes at different international competitions, including First Prize at the Concours Géza Anda in Zurich in 2003. Alexei Volodin’s debut recording for Challenge Classics (CC72354), released in March 2010, was devoted to the music Chopin, and his second CD which was issued in May 2011 (CC72508) brought together works by Schumann, Ravel, and Scriabin.

This Dal Segno releases features a collection of some of the greatest Russian pianists playing Russian compositions. Prokofiev and Scriabin are featured playing their own compositions in recordings taken from original piano rolls but replicated in 1992 on a new concert grand piano.

Richter only performed Rachmaninov’s first two concertos before embarking on his international career in 1960. This remastered Praga Digitals bi-channel hybrid SACD presents a logical compilation of two live performances plus four 'Preludes' which were to remain his favourites for the next 50 years.

When Sviatoslav Richter first got to know Rachmaninov’s piano concertos, the composer himself had been living in exile in the United States for 20 years. The young pianist was learning the Prokofiev and Rachmaninov major scores, having studied with Heinrich Neuhaus, and before his first travel to the West (1960). His first guest apperance in the free world, in Finland, was brought about by the mediation of Ekaterina Furtseva, a confidante of Nikolai Khrushchev, minister of culture for the few months preceding his Kremlin leadership. As encores we have four Rachmaninov 'Preludes', also recorded during his first tour of North America in 1960.

A unique programme which today’s cutting edge techniques have attempted to render in all their original glory. Praga Digitals celebrate their 20th anniversary in 2012.

Recorded 1951-1954

It is with some pride that Cornwall-based Magdalen is releasing several recordings of Saltash-born Dame Moura Lympany (others will surely follow in due course). Lympany had a clear affinity with Russian music and with Rachmaninov in particular: she was the first artist to record the Preludes complete (the recordings in this collection date from 1951) and her performances of Piano Concertos 1 – 3 under Malko and Collins, made between 1952 and 1954 and among the first to appear on LP, have always been treasured by critics and public alike. Space does not allow for all 24 Preludes but we have chosen eighteen of the finest to accompany the concertos. Quite simply, this is music-making to wallow in and to marvel at!

The meteoric ascent of Vassily Primakov's international career has resulted from a series of competition victories, prizes in honour of his artistry, and his award-winning recordings. Winner of First Prize in the Young Concert Artist International Auditions and the Audience Prize of the Gina Bachauer International Competition, Primakov was named the Classical Recording Foundation's “Young Artist of the Year” in 2007.

His much-heralded recordings have garnered National Public Radio's “CD of the Year” (Chopin Mazurkas, 2010), American Record Guide's “Best of the Year” (Schubert Impromptus; and Dvorak Piano Concerto, 2011) and BBC Music Magazine's Music Choice (Chopin Ballades, Brahms Intermezzi, and Scriabin Sonata No. 4, 2010).

This new recording presents Primakov's renditions of some of Rachmaninoff's most beloved works, played on a superb Bechstein Concert Grand.

Jeremy Filsell is one of very few performers to have established a virtuoso concert career as both a pianist and organist on the international stage. This recital disc explores Filsell’s lifelong love of Rachmaninov’s piano music, surveying selections from Preludes and Sonatas as well as two song transcriptions.