Schoenberg: Klavierstück, Op. 33a

Italian pianist Pina Napolitano performs Schoenberg’s complete piano works, in a rendition that, fully realizing the scores in all their complexity, animates the music and makes it dance, and “conveys its real quality as music - rather than as an object of academic study” (Guy Rickards).

“A romanticism so exasperated that the usual musical indications of expressivity cannot convey it; each note is signed, tormentingly and assiduously, with indications that do nothing but speak to the insufficiency of language and of writing - of every language and every writing, even of the most absolute, the musical language - to express the idea and the thought, the sensation and the still indistinct feeling. Such a concentrated and dolorous romanticism, so essential, that it takes your breath away, a romanticism of the mind and of the heart, in which to feel and to think are not distinct.”

1 CD + BONUS DVD

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) wrote five volumes of piano pieces that match the key phases of his musical evolution: tonal, atonal, the tone-row, while maintaining a remarkable stylistic unity that influenced most 20th century composers.

Comes with a bonus DVD, 'Schoenberg, the misunderstood'. Florent Boffard studied with Yvonne Loriod, Geneviève Joy and Germaine Mounier and from 1988 to 1999, was soloist of the Ensemble InterContemporain, where he worked with several of today’s most prominent composers, including Boulez, Donatoni, Ligeti…

His commitment to contemporary music is mirrored in his discography, which includes Boulez’s 'Structures' for two pianos with Pierre-Laurent Aimard (DGG), Berio’s 'Sequenza' for piano (DGG), Bartok’s 2nd Sonata for violin and piano with Isabelle Faust (hm) as well as a CD dedicated to Debussy and Bartok’s 'Etudes pour piano' (also hm).

It may seem daring to compare Schönberg's piano works in their significance with Beethoven's. Compared with the latter's 32 piano sonatas the former wrote only six piano pieces which, moreover, are often hardly longer than a few minutes. And still the compositional evolution of this great innovator of the music of our century is mirrored within the little piano pieces which, within the oeuvre of Schönberg, play a similary important role as Beethoven's great sonatas: Within them new compositonal and technical achievements are beeing concentrated, which later on also found their way into the great compositions. – Reinhard Kager

Steffen Schleiermacher is a leading interpreter of piano music of the twentieth century. Here he rounds off this MDG series featuring works by Berg, Schönberg, Webern and their pupils. The result has been a suspenseful, contrasting, fascinating and eminently significant compositional panorama and has been very successful.

This 2 CD set includes Steuermann’s historic recordings of Schoenberg’s complete works for piano solo, as well as works and arrangements by Steuermann himself. “How wonderful that Steuermann’s recording of piano pieces by Schoenberg is at last available again; it is the classic model for the interpretation of these works.” Alfred Brendel

The world class pianist Hardy Rittner performs on a Johann Baptist Streicher & Sohn Piano 1870 and a Steinway D Grand piano 1901.

The Canadian musician Glenn Gould was undoubtedly one of the greatest pianists of all time. To mark the 75th anniversary of his birth, and the 25th anniversary of his death, Sony BMG Masterworks presents this seminal artist’s vinyl recordings as re-mastered CDs, designed to replicate the exact artwork of the original gramophone records in miniaturised form. Already issued as part of an 80-CD box set (88697130942), these albums are now being made available individually.