Chopin: Waltz No. 8 in A flat major, Op. 64 No. 3

Anne-Marie McDermott's latest recording for Bridge features a broad selection of masterworks by Chopin. She is a consummate artist whose recordings range from Bach and Haydn to Prokofiev and Scriabin. Her recordings of Gershwin and Prokofiev on Bridge have been well received by the press.

Pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman is one of the most versatile and constantly interesting musicians of our time. His vast repertoire encompasses music from the Baroque to 20th-century composers. A regular guest soloist with leading symphony orchestras in the United States and abroad, he appears in the most prestigious concert series and music festivals all over the world.

Recorded in the mythical Salle de Musique at La-Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, this is the first solo recital of Evgeni Bozhanov (°1984), the Bulgarian pianist who has been shaking the piano world for over a year. At the major international competitions in which he has taken part since 2009, always reaching the finals, nobody remained indifferent – neither jury members nor public – to this exceptionally gifted pianist, seated in a low position and drawing unbelievable sounds from his piano.

Whether in Warsaw (Chopin 2010), Fort Worth (Van Cliburn 2009) or Brussels (Queen Elisabeth 2010), he produced a resolutely personal sound, notably in Chopin. Thanks to his Second Prize at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, awarded on 1st June 2010, Evgeni Bozhanov was given the opportunity to leave a trace of his so original art with Fuga Libera, in coproduction with the bank BNP Paribas Fortis, who chose him as their laureate for 2010-11 for a private concerts series.

Close your eyes, listen and discover!

Reissue Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn

It is not surprising that Lipatti achieved cult status in the years following his death at the age of 33. He was an extremely sensitive musician and a man whose approach to the piano was one of utter fastidiousness, always striving for perfection in every aspect of his interpretation and performance. Throughout this Besançon recital there is a clarity of sound, evenness of attack and scrupulous attention to gradation of dynamics, characteristic hallmarks of Lipatti’s playing. The fourteen Chopin Waltzes are played in the order that Lipatti chose for performance but, according to his wife, he was too physically weak to play the last Waltz in A flat, Op. 34 No. 1, so it is included here from his commercial recording of a few months before.

Reissue Producer and Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn

This volume continues the Naxos series of Rubinstein’s ‘middle period’ Chopin recordings, begun with the Piano Concertos (8111296) and followed by the Polonaises (8111346). Because the HMV/Victor catalogue already included Cortot’s complete traversal of the Waltzes (8111035), Rubinstein set down only two of them on shellac before making this complete recording in 1954. He had made previous recordings for RCA of two of the Impromptus (Opp. 51 and 66) before taping the four new versions heard on this disc.

Drewnowski started playing the piano as a young child. In 1975 he recorded piano sonatas by Scarlatti and Leonard Bernstein was so impressed by his performances that he invited him to the Tanglewood Music Festival. These days he is professor of piano at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and the Academy of Music in Łódź, Poland. Here he performs on a Pleyel 1848 fortepiano.