Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58

Clarity of form and colour, the piano as a narrator and ballad-singer: Nelson Goerner has his own way of interpreting Chopin, and he shows it here in a varied recital programme ranging from major works like the famous B minor Sonata through the Nocturnes to the F minor Ballade.

Lipatti’s recorded legacy is small. Regis presents a selection of his recordings for EMI which best display this iconic pianist’s artistic diversity. Included are sonatas by Scarlatti, Mozart, Chopin and his compatriot Enescu and extracts from Brahms’ Waltzes Op.39 with Nadia Boulanger.

'To his wife he [Lipatti] said, "You see, it is not enough to be a great composer. To write music like that you must be a chosen instrument of God." By the same light we may say that it is not enough to be a great pianist: to play as Lipatti played you must be a chosen instrument of God. God lent the world His chosen instrument who we called Dinu Lipatti for too brief a space.’ Walter Legge

Canada’s “First Lady of Chopin” has embarked on an incredible year of recitals, orchestral concerts and master-classes and will be performing at the Cadogan Hall and Fairfield Hall in May. Her previous Chopin recital CD on ATMA (ACD22597) has received excellent reviews.

Stephen Hough joins the celebrations for Chopin’s 200th birthday with a disc containing much of the composer’s most extraordinary music, written in the last years of his life where the expressive possibilites of his art were constantly unfolding as he imbued his favoured forms with previously unknown levels of complexity and emotional depth. This disc includes the intoxicatingly ornamented Berceuse Op 57 and the sublime Barcarolle in F sharp major as well as the Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major and the towering Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor. Also included are two late Nocturnes which demonstrate how Chopin’s art had evolved since he first composed in that genre in his youth. The programme is completed by a selection of Mazurkas, each a tiny jewel, containing no less mastery than their larger counterparts, and providing moving sonic evidence of the contemplative profundity of Chopin’s late style.

Stephen Hough’s extraordinarily sensitive playing is informed by his limitless technique and engaging musical imagination. This is the Chopin of a true Romantic.

Nikolai Lugansky signs to ONYX, and returns to the studio after a gap of several years.

Lugansky has recorded 23 CDs. His solo recordings on Warner Classics - Chopin Etudes, Rachmaninov Preludes & Moments musicaux and Chopin Preludes – were each awarded a Diapason d'Or. His PentaTone Classics SACD of Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, with the Russian National Orchestra under Kent Nagano, was cited as “Editor’s Choice” in Gramophone. His Warner Prokofiev CD was one of the “CDs of the Year (2004)“ featured in The Telegraph. Lugansky’s Warner recordings of the complete piano concertos of Rachmaninov, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo, received Choc du Monde de la Musique, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik and the 2005 ECHO Klassik Award. His last recording (Chopin's and Rachmaninov's cello sonatas) with the cellist Alexander Kniazev won the 2007 Echo Klassik Award.

His all-Chopin recital will be one of the most important CDs to be released in 2010 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Ka Ling Colleen Lee, a rising star of Chopin interpretation, has won numerous awards at many leading piano competitions, including sixth prize at the Fifteenth International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Her sense of form and particular sensitivity to the timbres of the instrument have borne fruit in outstanding renderings of the B minor Sonata and the Polonaise-fantasy. Both these works appear on this disc, alongside Mazurkas from Op. 33 and six Preludes from Op. 28.