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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Jon Nakamatsu plays Brahms
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| |  | Shai Wosner plays Schoenberg & Brahms
The debut recording from Shai Wosner. Wosner continues to attract international recognition for his exceptional artistry, musical integrity and creative insight. With imaginative programming that communicates his intellectual curiosity, Wosner performs a wide-ranging repertoire from Mozart and Beethoven to Ligeti and composers of his own generation. Wosner’s virtuosity and perceptiveness have increasingly made him a favourite among audiences and critics alike. In 2005, Wosner won an Avery Fisher Career Grant. In the same year, he received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. He also continues his extensive performing and recording activity as a BBC New Generation Artist, which he was named in September 2007. He is in demand with orchestras and conductors worldwide. Both Brahms and Schoenberg were indebted to the musical styles of earlier generations – and not just the mighty shadow of Beethoven. The baroque period intrigued both composers, and it is interesting to note that two of their most important works for solo piano – works in which they expressed their mature style and authority – are inspired by the baroque. Shai Wosner calls the Suite by Schoenberg and the Handel Variations by Brahms ‘declarations of independence’. The Schoenberg was his first purely 12-tone work, and the Brahms was his first wholly successful solo piano work after the three early sonatas, yet both take their inspiration from the baroque period. Brahms the revolutionary is highlighted by Wosner on this CD by interweaving the late op.116 Fantasies with Schoenberg’s early op.19 piano pieces – only 12 years separate the two – the surprises are many. ‘An artist to follow keenly ’ Financial Times “This is a genuinely imaginative pairing of two composers who have more in common than their popular images might suggest...The sequence works well, and Wosner's understated playing suits it perfectly.” The Guardian, 26th August 2010 **** “...if Brahms and Schoenberg may strike conservative listeners as odd bedfellows, Shai Wosner, a young Israeli pianist, does not see any dichotomy between "old" and "new" music, but an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2010 “Paradoxically, the alternation of shorter pieces allows them to assert their individuality at the same time that it underlines their connections with one another. If, for even a very brief moment, one is caught asking oneself, 'Wait, is this Brahms or Schoenberg?', then Wosner's provocative idea is valid...I have not enjoyed a new piano recital as much in quite some time!” International Record Review, December 2010 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Brahms: Late Piano Works
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| |  | Brahms - Horn Trio
Brahms was especially fond of the sound of the natural horn, which he saw as the embodiment of Romantic lyricism. Although the valve horn had begun to replace it in the early 19th century, it was for the older instrument, the Waldhorn, that he wrote his Trio Op. 40, today still the summit of the repertoire for its unusual forces. Here three young musicians, graduates of harmonia mundi, attempt to reconstruct the trio's original sound as precisely as possible. “It's a superb version of the piece by any standard, the slow movements absolutely saturated in intense Romantic melancholy but fleet and agile in scherzo and finale. Faust and Melnikov and scarcely less revelatory in the G major Violin Sonata… Very generous in terms of its duration, this is a disc where one truly feels every note has been given the space to make its effect.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 ***** “Teunis van der Zwart used a natural horn from Lorenz built in 1845. He is an astonishingly accomplished and musical player, and he has a superb supporting team.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2008 “This is a unique performance [of the Horn Trio] and the result is a triumph, with 'stopped' notes adding to the range of colour, as the composer intended.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition “The whole performance [of the horn trio] has a lightness of touch and an athletic exuberance that are totally convincing.” Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 22nd August 2008 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Henri Bonamy plays Brahms & Schubert
Henri Bonamy is fast becoming one of the most ‘in demand’ young talents of his generation, on the concert platform today. A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire he has played extensively throughout Europe and the Far East, in concerto and solo performances. He is a regular chamber music recitalist and his performing partners include Julia Fischer, Marina Chiche and Wen-Sinn Yang. | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Brahms - Klavierstücke, Opp. 116 - 119
“Steering a balanced course between imaginative vitality and warmth on one side and resigned melancholy on the other can be difficult, but Nicholas Angelich manages it with a kind of panache. He takes you to the brink of inconsolable sadness one moment, only to put a refreshingly spring in the step of a dance movement the next.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2007 ***** “Trenchant, focused Brahms from a formidable player . . . . Nicholas Angelich is an American pianist, trained in Paris, whose performances on this disc are of a wholly exceptional drama, sweep and impeccable craftsmanship. Few young pianists have so little truck with flighty, salon-ish alternatives to seriousness, and his Brahms is sufficiently authoritative to make one long to hear him in the piano concertos. . . . . Angelich’s is nonetheless among the finest recordings of Brahms’s formidable masterpiece.” Gramophone Magazine  CD Review
Critics Disc of the Year - December 2007 |
 BBC Music Magazine
Instrumental Choice - March 2007 |
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| |  | Brahms, Liszt, Scriabin: Piano Works
DDD | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Titanic performances that underline the structural integrity of these massive works, but also alive to their poetic heart - James Jolly, Gramophone 1000th issue “The booklet-notes make reference to the original Gramophone review, in which Gilels and Jochum were praised for 'a rapt songfulness that in no way detracts from Brahms's heroism, and so comes closer to that unique and complex combination of attitudes that for me is Brahms more than any other performances of these concertos I have ever heard, on records or otherwise'. It might be added that Jochum and the Berlin Philharmonic make plain sailing where others struggle with choppy cross-currents (admittedly sometimes to Brahms's advantage) and that the recordings don't sound their age. Other interpreters have perhaps probed a little deeper here and there; neither concerto rests content with a single interpretation, the Second especially. As for the Seven Piano Pieces, Gilels viewed the opus as a single piece, a musical novella in several chapters.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “Gilels and Jochum supply impressive drama” MusicWeb International, February 2012 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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“a snip at budget price” Classic CD | | | (also available to download from $5.75) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Gramophone Magazine