Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor, S178

This is Ukraine-born Alexei Grynyuk’s first solo recording of the music of Franz Liszt, a composer that has been in Grynyuk’s repertoire since he first started winning piano competitions at the age of 6.

In Liszt’s bicentennial year Grynyuk performed the Sonata at a special concert in Kiev – alongside both of Liszt’s piano concertos.

Grynyuk is a first prize-winner at the Vladimir Horowitz International Piano Competition and the Shanghai International Piano Competition.

“…breathtaking musical accomplishment with musicianship of the highest order…” Musical Opinion

Italian pianist Domenico Codispoti performs Liszt’s famous B minor Sonata, his Petrarch Sonnets, and Granados El Amor y la Muerte from Goyescas - a passionately performed romantic programme, making of the disc a musical polaroid of the artist’s own emotional journey through its themes of love and death.

“One of the finest young concert pianists I know. He has superb technical command, exceptionally fine taste in his interpretations, impressive maturity.” These where the words of Gyorgy Sandor after awarding Domenico Codispoti the First Prize at the Pilar Bayona International Piano Competition (member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions) in Zaragoza, Spain, which marked the beginning of his international career. Hailed by critics worldwide as “a fully mature virtuoso in the highest meaning of the word” (Morgunbladid, Reykjavik), “one of the most elegant and musical artists of his generation” (Diario de Jaén), “a skilled storyteller, always imaginative and inventive” (flyinginkpot.com), Italian pianist Domenico Codispoti is also winner of Ferrol International Piano Competition, Premio Jaén (WFIMC), and many international piano contests in his native Italy.

After a chance meeting in a hotel in Italy, pianist Sophie Pacini has become firm friends and concert partner with Martha Argerich who has said of her performance style: “You very much remind me of myself.”

Liszt’s Sonata in B minor rightly occupies a place of importance in the history of the 19th-century sonata. Armenian pianist Vardan Manikonian performs this masterpiece alongside a selection of other well-known piano works; Liebestraum No. 3, probably the best-known of Liszt’s piano works, La Lugubre Gondola, Première valses oubliée, a playful piece, characterised by dry, virtuosic writing, and Funérailles, one of the best pieces among the Harmonies poétiques et religeuses collection.