Haydn: Piano Sonata No. 58 in C major, Hob.XVI:48

2 discs for the price of 1.

Marc-André Hamelin’s first set of Haydn Piano Sonatas was Hyperion’s best-selling release of 2007, and had the critics jostling to acclaim his performances in the highest terms, in particular his expression of the ‘physical exhilaration of Haydn’s playful inspiration in a way unmatched by any pianist past or present’. His second volume, released in a year where new Haydn recordings are prominent, should surely match the critical and commercial success of the first.

Some of Haydn’s most alluring and appealing keyboard works are recorded here. The surprising (to some) emotional range of the composer is fully evident in the extraordinarily sensitive and intimate Sonata in E flat major No 49, written for Maria Anna von Genzinger, and the profoundly felt Andante con variazioni in F minor, the composition of which coincided with her death.

Originally recorded for Denon in 1979 and available on CD for the first time in 15 years. Highly acclaimed performances and the only available Schiff recordings of the Bach Concerti.

“This record had me completely gripped.” Gramophone Magazine

Five years after a critically acclaimed trilogy of recitals devoted to the piano sonatas, Alain Planès was keen to round off his portrait of Haydn with the composer reigning supreme over the genre in the final decade of the 18th century - his very last sonatas foreshadow the art of Beethoven and even Schubert…

CD+DVD

This unusual project presents a rounded portrait of the Belgrade-born pianist Mira Yevtich through a live concert DVD of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for piano & strings and four diverse pieces for solo piano by Venetian composer Baldassare Galuppi, via Haydn and Brahms to Alexander Tchaikovsky (born 1946), and a CD, recorded in a Moscow Radio studio, of those same four solo works. Mira Yevtich studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatoire and won the 1988 International Festival of Modern Music in St Petersburg. Now an Australian national, she is a regular soloist at Sydney Opera House, and performs in Russia and throughout Europe and America. She has played with conductors such as Valeri Gergiev, Evgeni Svetlanov, and Yuri Bashmet, and made several CDs, among them four for Bel Air. These include Mozart Piano Concertos, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and most recently ‘The Music of Grant Foster’.

Here her typically enterprising repertoire encompasses a Haydn Sonata and Brahms Two Rhapsodies, Op 79, and two rarities, a keyboard sonata by Galuppi, the prolific Italian Baroque composer very much better known for his operas, and the Piano Sonata dedicated to her by contemporary Russian composer Alexander Tchaikovsky (apparently unrelated to his famous namesake Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky). Her performance of the Schnittke concerto with the State Hermitage Orchestra under Vladimir Fanshil and the alternative versions of the four solo pieces were recorded in St Petersburg in May.

Gary Cooper is now established as one of the foremost ambassadors of the harpsichord and fortepiano - in particular, as an interpreter of Bach’s & Mozart’s keyboard music – and as a director of period performance in concert, and in opera. Gary is ‘Artist in Residence’ of the exciting Belgian period instrument ensemble, B’Rock, directing orchestral and opera productions, recordings, and is guest artistic director of a new festival in Bruges. This coming season, Gary appears at major festivals such as the Flanders Festival, the Bruges, Utrecht, Potsdam and Innsbruck Early Music Festivals and throughout the UK.

The Duo partnership of Gary Cooper with Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. Their recordings, with Channel Classics, of Mozart’s Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin has received countless awards and accolades, including multiple Diapason d’Or awards and Gramophone Editor’s Choices, and hailed as ‘benchmark’ recordings.

"The inspiration for this recording was derived from that all-too-rare occurrence: a perfect marriage of instrument and composer's music. The language of Haydn's later keyboard writing, containing such infinitesimal subtlety of expression, inflection, dynamic range, colour, and every mood under the sun, from tempest to sunny wit, seems to me perfectly matched by the gem of a piano used for this recording,dating from Vienna c.1785. In truth, I have never encountered an instrument capable of such breadth of touch and response from this period: to my mind, Haydn's last, and greatest, keyboard works, richly deserve being heard on such a piano, in order that the fullest range of expression and depth of imagination contained in these remarkable pieces may be brought alive.” Gary Cooper

The Hommage to Joseph Haydn consists of six piano pieces composed in 1909, commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of the 100th year of the composer’s death. The six composers are Hahn, Widor, d’Indy, Dukas, Ravel and Debussy. Coupled with five of the Haydn’s most wonderful sonatas, pianist Manfred Wagner-Artzt plays with a full command of the scores and an obvious affection and deep understanding of the music.