Shostakovich: Lyric Waltz (from Dances of the Dolls)

Many European countries have vied with one another in claiming the largest number of piano virtuosos. No one would dispute, though, that Russia has generated more than its share. The so-called ‘Russian piano school’, which originated in the 1800s with brilliant performers such as Alexander Siloti and brothers Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein, continues to produce first-class pianists, and to influence performance styles and keyboard virtuosity all around the world.

Given Russia’s richness in superstar pianists, it is not surprising that Russian composers have composed extensively for the piano. Some of the composers represented in this collection were impressive pianists in their own right, and they composed music designed to display their own technique and artistry. Others were more modestly gifted as performers, but still composed idiomatically for the piano.

This collection brings together recordings by Vladimir Ashkenazy spanning some 40 years, from November 1963 (the three Rachmaninov Études-Tableaux) to March 2004 (the Kocsis transcription of Vocalise). Some of them appeared as fillers for bigger works – for instance, the Études-Tableaux were coupled with the 1964 recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Kyril Kondrashin, one of Ashkenazy’s earliest recording for Decca, and his first solo recording for the label. Tchaikovsky’s Dumka and the pieces by Taneyev, Liadov and Borodin were recorded in January 1983 and issued on LP as a coupling for his digital recording of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The two pieces from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet were taped in 1968 as couplings for the composer’s Eighth Piano Sonata.

Lisa Batiashvili’s debut album for DG, ‘Echoes of Time’, is a matter of the heart - Lisa focuses her program on composers whose lives and work have been heavily influenced by the political happenings in former Soviet Union. Inspired by personal experience, Lisa, herself, went into German exile with her family during the political upheaval in Georgia in 1991.

The program spans the whole of the 20th century, classics by Shostakovich ‘Waltz from the Doll’s Dances’ and Rachmaninov’s ever popular ‘Vocalise’, are combined with Georgian composer, Giya Kancheli’s ‘V and V’, and Estonian, Arvo Pärt’s ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’. ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ was written shortly before the composer went into exile.

For Pärt’s ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ and Rachmaninov’s ‘Vocalise’ Lisa teams up with one of our DG’s most distinctive pianists, Hélène Grimaud. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Symphonie orchester des bayerischen.

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.