Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110

Sviatoslav Richter never played the 'Moonlight' Sonata in public - quite extraordinary when you consider that the opening adagio is one of the most performed keyboard pieces ever.

Here we have an unusual juxtaposition of two very different aspects of Beethoven's oeuvre. Sonata No. 31, prefaces the disarray of the adagio of the 15th Quartet op.132, and has no dedicatee, but Richter's incomparable art of legato makes it irresistible. The 'Diabelli Variations', like the 'Art of Fugue' or Bach's 'Goldberg Variations', are not ideal in concert, too introspective or better served in bite-sized chunks. Richter offers his unique view leading from Bach to Stockhausen via Mozart and anticipating the pianism of Chopin and Liszt.

Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras. Early in his career, Pratt won the Naumburg International Piano Competition becoming the first African-American classical instrumentalist to win first prize in this international competition. Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, his second release from EMI Classics, Pratt tackles Beethoven’s late piano sonatas with a robust freshness and unaffected musicality. The result is intimate, playful, and charming.

Alexei Lubimov’s 2010 disc of Impromptus by Schubert was praised in the press. During the same recording session in Haarlem in July 2009, Alexei Lubimov continued with the last three sonatas of Beethoven, Beethoven’s musical testimony which he plays with all the mastery of a great russian pianist, "a kind of russian Pollini" (Alain Lompech, Diapason).

“They must be played ‘uncomfortably’, ‘intangibly’; nothing in them reveals itself, nothing ‘plays itself’, and one must take enormous pains to ‘elucidate’ the text for oneself… these sonatas are divorced from the keyboard instrument itself… as if the musical content of these sonatas ‘disregards’ the instrument to hand, overcoming its material nature and its historical characteristics… I felt still more strongly how astonishing, how unusual the compositional material is and how tenaciously Beethoven seeks to consolidate, extend, and transform for his own idiosyncratic purposes the forms and structural principles he inherited from his predecessors.” Alexei Lubimov

Alexei Lubimov belongs both to the great Russian tradition of pianists such as Richter and Gilels (he was the one of the last pupils of Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow) and to the generation of Early Music pioneers that includes Gustav Leonhardt and the Kuijken brothers. He is also a leading interpreter of such modern composers as Denisov, Schnittke, Silvestrov and Arvo Pärt.

With this triple cultural background, Alexei Lubimov has pursued an exceptional international career. In 1968 he was in Brussels to play Denisov when he met the Kuijkens. He gave the first performances in the USSR of John Cage and Terry Riley. In the 1970s he founded the Moscow Baroque Quartet, the first Soviet ensemble of its kind, with which he rediscovered the Baroque repertoire on period instruments. This was followed in the 1980s by the creation of the avant-garde Alternativa festival in Moscow and a modern and historical keyboard class at the Moscow Conservatory. Alexei Lubimov is also professor of fortepiano at the Salzburg Mozarteum.

Eric Schneider has studied both the piano and conducting. He pursued a career as an accompanist and has worked with world renowned singers such as Christine Schäfer and Matthias Goerne. This is his first solo recording.

Since his first release for Virgin Classics, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations in 2000, Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski’s has produced a catalogue which ranges from Bach and Mozart, through more Beethoven to Chopin, Szymanowski and Webern, and which includes several prizewinning recordings.

Both intellectual and inspirational, Anderszewski has said of musical interpretation: “One can speculate endlessly about the right ingredients, the perfect combination but the essential question remains unanswerable, lying far beyond the limits of the cleverest and most refined argument. And yet one goes on searching and, while realising that the search is about everything, the essence may yet reveal itself in the most unexpected way.”

This new release captures live performances by Anderszewski at a very recent recital – December 2008 – in New York’s legendary Carnegie Hall. The critic of the New York Times made clear that this was an exceptional musical experience.

After a performance so intense and draining, the notion of encores almost seemed superfluous. But Bartók’s Three Hungarian Folksongs from the Csik District had a welcome earthiness”

Anderszewski repeated the programme in Chicago shortly afterwards, and the response of the Chicago Sun Times was at a similar level of enthusiasm:

“There is something deeply comforting about the kind of perfection that Polish-Hungarian pianist Piotr Anderszewski brought to his program of Bach, Janácek and Beethoven … Perfection is a relative term when it comes to art, of course. There are myriad but equally valid ways to play a Bach partita or Beethoven sonata … Different artists plumb different facets in a piece of music, and listeners can only benefit from hearing what each one has managed to unearth.

But during the two hours or so that they are onstage, artists like Anderszewski manage to create a universe that seems utterly complete unto itself. There is a sense of inevitability in their performance, a feeling that the true essence of a composer's intentions has been discovered. Especially when our daily lives are battered by forces beyond our control, it is reassuring to spend an afternoon in a world of such richly calibrated balance.“

“It can be hard not to wax hyperbolic when confronted with the pianist Piotr Anderszewski’s sensitive touch and potent imagination.” New York Times