Chopin: Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60

Since a very early age, Magdalena Lisak has been winning top prizes in national and international competitions. One of her most valuable experiences was a course at the Basle Music Academy under Krystian Zimerman. She also honed her skills in masterclasses given by Victor Merzhanov and Leon Fleisher, and in chamber music with members of the Amadeus Quartet. Her interpretations have been recorded for Deutsche Rundfunk, Radio Suisse Romande, Polskie Radio and Telewizja Polska and many more.

Daniil Trifonov, winner of the XIVth International Tchaikovsky Competition, is probably the world’s most exciting young pianist. On his first Mariinsky recording he joins Valery Gergiev for a scintillating performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1. Daniil also presents a selection of recital repertoire including music by Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Liszt transcriptions of Schubert and Schumann.

Written for Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto is one of his most popular works. Revised three times, including an arrangement for two pianos, the concerto was finally set in stone in 1888 and it is this version that is most frequently performed today. Tchaikovsky balances core motivic elements with a sense of lyrical spontaneity to create a technically challenging but instantly appealing work.

At only 21 years old, Daniil Trifonov has won countless awards, including the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (Gold Medal). Valery Gergiev personally awarded Trifonov the ‘Grand Prix’ in Moscow, an additional award given to the best overall competitor in any category of the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

In 2011, Trifonov gave his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra and has since performed with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Mariinsky Orchestra, as well as touring throughout the USA, Europe and the Far East. In the coming season he will make debuts with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and Chicago Symphony orchestras, as well as performing recitals at Salle Pleyel, Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall and Wigmore Hall.

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.

This is Volume 2 in our series of solo piano works by Chopin, played by the French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie.

Recording exclusively for Chandos, Lortie is recognised as one of the finest interpreters of Chopin today. He first recorded Chopin’s Études for Chandos more than twenty years ago; the disc was named as one of the ‘50 great performances by superlative pianists’ by BBC Music. Volume 1 of his current Chopin series also has received excellent reviews: the magazine Pianist wrote: ‘He is a pianist of our time when it comes to speed, energy and an unfussy approach to Chopin. His way of playing is like a sharply cut steel sculpture, super elegant and with not one single smudge.’ And in the words of International Piano: ‘These are full-blooded and eloquent performances, an auspicious start to what looks likely to become one of the finest of Chopin surveys.’

The ballade was associated with French poetry up until the mid-nineteenth century, when Chopin was among the first to transform the genre into a purely musical form for solo piano. His four ballades, recorded here, are among his most extraordinary and powerful works, full of dramatic contrasts, with moments of lyrical tenderness followed by passages of rambunctious energy.

The Irish composer John Field invented the piano nocturne as a lyrical and dreamy short piece, a charming and languorous creation that was later transformed and extended by Chopin into something with a much wider emotional range, and a general sense of wistfulness. This ‘Chopin’ style of nocturne soon came to replace the Fieldian style as the preferred model of the genre. The simplicity and directness of expression found in the nocturnes have made them the most popular of all Chopin’s works.

Composed towards the end of his life, the Barcarolle (originally a Venetian gondolier’s song) for solo piano is a melancholy, but sweepingly romantic work that conjures up strong images of Venetian boats, water, and oars. Also on this disc is the Berceuse (inspired by the traditional mood of the lullaby), based around a single four-bar theme which Chopin ornaments in increasingly elaborate ways as the piece develops.

Sviatoslav Richter (1915–1997) is acknowledged today as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century along with his great Russian contemporaries, David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels and Mstislav Rostropovich.

This rare broadcast recording makes its first appearance on CD.

The June 1967 recital at the Royal Festival Hall very much reflects the pianist’s personal taste, containing the rarely played Haydn and Weber Sonatas together with the Schumann Novelettes with the more popular additions of Chopin and Debussy.

He declared, ‘my principle is to play only works that I really love and not just those that are currently accepted’.

Of all the Haydn Sonatas that Richter played, No.62 featured more frequently in his programmes as did the Weber Sonata No.3, which he regarded in a notebook entry in 1990 as a ‘highly original work and I like it a lot’.

The two Schumann Novelettes were often played in the 1960s though Richter did not perform No.8 for the following two decades. With the Chopin and Debussy, Richter is on familiar territory, which he invests with his characteristic imagination and spontaneity.

Superb Ambient Mastering recreates the atmosphere in the Royal Festival Hall perfectly.

Two releases on Deutsche Grammophon will be devoted to Chopin: a solo recital recorded in Warsaw, with deeply-felt Waltzes, a Polonaise, a Fantasia, a Nocturne and the B flat minor Sonata, as well as Chopin’s two piano concertos, accompanied by the Staatskapelle Berlin under Andris Nelsons, captured live at the Ruhr Piano Festival in July 2010.