Music is the key

[...] bar, and his playing acquires an appropriately heavy tread in the initial statement of the first movement's principal theme. A good proportion of this movement is in bare, unharmonised octaves, and [...]

[...] in these gorgeous readings. Just listen to the transcendent beauty of the second theme in the first movement of the G-Major Sonata, to how it expands to embrace an exalted state of ecstasy. In one [...]

[...] the big tunes kick in. Take, for example, the piano’s turn at the theme partway through the first movement of the Violin Sonata in G, accompanied by a delicate pizzicato violin. In other recordings, [...]

[...] , the music only slowing for the brilliant cadenza before building to a restatement of the first movement's opening theme and then driving to its thrilling and emphatic final chords. Though this [...]

[...] he seems to have understood the power of music to move us,” writes John Holloway in the liner notes, and “to express otherwise inexpressible emotions. He called them ‘passionate pavans’, [...]

[...] .E. Bach. Coupled with the wonderful playing, listeners are also treated to an excellent set of liner notes making this album a very wise choice. (Mike D. Brownell) [...]

[...] dynamic contrasts that have become almost a trademark. Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich in the liner notes: “The metaphor of ‘dancing’ should be interpreted less as a profound than as an [...]

[...] . The trio’s own composing can be heard in a sequence of atmospheric interludes. In his liner notes to Aquilonis, John Potter aptly describes the group’s ability to “create a synthesis of [...]

The Diabelli Variations have long been considered a magnum opus in Beethoven's piano music and a towering historical contribution to the genre, with B [...]

When I'm so deeply absorbed in a composer, as I have been with Beethoven, then I physically and mentally begin to feel like him. Beethoven changed me [...]

When András Schiff performed the “Waldstein sonata” in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall in November 2005, Jeremy Eichler, writing in the New York T [...]

[...] to record – projects based not on commercial criteria but rather on artistic impulse. Manfred Eicher wanted us to propose music to him, and if he agreed that it seemed special and right at [...]

[...] association was further strengthened by an “Armenian Night” realized with the help of Manfred Eicher, at the 1999 Bergen International Music Festival, in which Kashkashian, Robyn Schulkowsky, [...]

[...] music was made at Lugano’s Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera in March 2013, and produced by Manfred Eicher. [...]

[...] recorded in April, 2013 at the Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano, and produced by Manfred Eicher. It is released in time for a European tour with a programme including music of Debussy, [...]

[...] have made distinguished recordings on their own, but they have also collaborated before on chamber music by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorák and Weber, Melnikov having also played the Beethoven violin [...]

[...] craftsmanship and great aesthetic open-mindedness. This CD, with three major new pieces of chamber music, is the first to present his art to an international audience. Some time around 2000 Manfred [...]

[...] success in 1936 with the first performance of his Concertino for piano and orchestra at the chamber music festival in Baden-Baden. During the ensuing years, the composer extended his oeuvre with [...]

[...] is regularly appearing on the most important international stages and festivals as well as chamber music partner as soloist. Dana Zemtsov was born in 1992 in Mexico City. She comes from a family of [...]

[...] Giya Kancheli's fifth album for ECM New Series is the first to be devoted exclusively to the Georgian composer's orchestral music, and [...]

[...] its outstanding acoustics. Starting in October 2005, the complete cycle will be released on ECM New Series in eight volumes. The Sonatas will be issued in chronological order as single or double [...]

[...] sensitivity and distinction bound for 21st- century glory” has been championed on ECM New Series since 2001. Last fall Larcher’s piano piece “What becomes” attracted wide-spread [...]

[...] new recording from Kim Kashkashian brings Armenia’s leading contemporary composer to ECM New Series in a programme that also explores the roots of Armenian music. Compositions by Mansurian for [...]

[...] Three years after the release of the first volume, András Schiff‘s highly acclaimed Beethoven cycle is now complete. In his afterword to the eighth installment he described the challenges he [...]

[...]  The first three instalments of András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle in chronological order have met with great critical acclaim. “This will be one of the great [...]

[...] International press reactions to the first volume of Schiff’s Beethoven cycle released in October 2005 were unanimous in their praise and critics expressed high [...]

[...] Zeitung after this concert in December 2005. Volume V of Schiff’s much acclaimed Beethoven cycle in chronological order, recorded live in Zurich, offers four masterworks dating from [...]

[...] shaped by the conductor, and Abbado's subtlety in his old age is remarkable to hear. In the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, he generates a great deal of tension without resorting to the [...]

[...] 16 is the release of the third and final recording of the Beethoven Journey, featuring Piano Concerto No. 5 Emperor and the Choral Fantasy, recorded live in concert at the Prague Spring Festival [...]

[...] -born conductor Alain Altinoglu with whom she obviously has a close rapport. Khachaturian's Piano Concerto dates from 1936 and attempted to revive the bravura pianistic traditions of Liszt while at [...]

[...] second-movement Allegro molto, and again the rug is pulled from beneath us at the close when solo violin and cello are given quite unexpected monologues like afterthoughts on what has passed. An [...]

[...] -bar periods of a simple but moving folk song until the strings enter a dialogue with the solo violin, whereupon a transformation takes place... In terms of textural density, Mansurian’s [...]

[...] wrote in his music for instrumental and vocal ensemble, but especially in his many sonatas for solo violin. But Biber, in his compositions, was concerned with more than simply flaunting his [...]

András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle, recorded live in chronological order at Tonhalle Zurich, continues to collect critical praise as it moves forward [...]

International critics writing on the first two volumes of András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle have praised a particularly “sharp attention to detail� [...]

 The first three instalments of András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle in chronological order have met with great critical acclaim. “This will be one o [...]