Chopin: Mazurka No. 45 in A minor, Op. 67 No. 4

“Min plays with the most ravishing piano tone I’ve heard in the last 50 discs I’ve listened to, at least! Her dynamic control is out of this world … anybody’s music would be served well by Min’s touch.”

Thus raved American Record Guide’s Stephen Estep in his review of a previous recording by distinguished Korean pianist Klara Min. With this release, Min brings her special touch to a seventeen-piece survey of her favorite Mazurkas – a unique “composer genre” from Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849): widely regarded as the most intimate, heartfelt, emotionally varied, and deeply personal music that this beloved “Poet of the piano” ever wrote. Loosely based on the traditional Polish mazurek dance-form, Chopin applied subtle classical sophistication and advanced (for his day) harmonic schemes to this mostly simple folk-form, elevating it into high musical art that is far better-suited to the concert stage (or classical recordings) than to dancing!

Klara Min – justly renowned for her championing of Korean composers as well as her overall versatility – applies her “ravishing piano tone” to these lovely and affecting works, as well as her rare interpretive acumen, technical wizardry, plus a deeply intuitive and soulful affinity for Chopin’s music.

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.

Anne Queffélec is among the most popular pianists of her generation, appreciated for the diversity of her repertoire, as her impressive discography testifies. In addition to the French repertoire, she has became particularly known for her performance of works by Mozart and Scarlatti. Her recordings include works of J.S. Bach, Scarlatti, Liszt, Chopin, Schubert, Mozart, Fauré and Debussy.

The Latvian pianist Dina Yoffe is a professor at the Anton Rubinstein International Academy in Germany and has worked with many celebrated orchestras and conductors. She has made numerous recordings for radio, television and phonographic companies including Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Fantasy in F minor and 19 Waltzes. She performs here on a 1848 Pleyel fortepiano.

“This recital, given at the Studio Ansermet in Geneva, brings together the three composers who are, to my mind, most representative of the Romantic image of piano music and the most innovative. Members of the same generation 1810, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt succeeded in transcending the art of the piano by their inspired and eminently subjective musical visions.

One thing is certain: this highly moving Romantic generation represented by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt held the secret of making us dream with our heart.”

Romain Hervé

For the main work on this album of American recordings made at the time of the Great War, Bach’s Double Concerto in D minor (slightly abridged to fit on three 78rpm sides, Kreisler is joined by the Russian violinist Efrem Zimbalist. The Appendix features three tracks with soprano Geraldine Farrar and the only surviving recording of Kreisler-as-pianist, playing Dvorak’s Humoresque.

Producer and Audio Restoration Producer: Ward Marston

The winner of numerous international awards as a producer of both pop and classical recordings, Craig Leon also leads a career as a composer. His album for Joshua Bell of transcriptions for violin and orchestra was unanimously acclaimed everywhere, which prompted him quite naturally to turn to the cello after meeting Ophélie Gaillard when she was giving a concert at the Wigmore Hall. He has created new arrangements for her, reviving the long standing tradition of cellists, from Gregor Piatigorsky to Pablo Casals who played popular transcriptions of great works on their instruments. Ophélie is accompanied by the RPO, recorded at Abbey Road studios and supported by CIC who loaned her magnificent Gofriller cello.

“the rich tones of Ophélie Gaillard’s 1737 Gofriller cello complement her warm lyrical style and add colour to a keen awareness of instrumental vocalisation.” The Strad, June 2010