JOACHIM RAFF : Complete Suites for Solo Piano · Volume III (Alexander Zolotarev) (2004) FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

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JOACHIM RAFF : Complete Suites for Solo Piano · Volume IV (Alexander Zolotarev) (2004) FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

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YUJA WANG - The Vienna Recital : Albéniz · Beethoven · Каpustin · Ligeti · Scriabin (2024) FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

No longer the young sensation, pianist Yuja Wang these days gets Deutsche Grammophon's "The [fill-in-the-city-name] Recital" treatment with several live concert recordings presented as major events, and, indeed, they are. This one was made in Vienna in April of 2022, and it is a remarkable high-wire act in its programming and execution, one that few pianists of the present or past could have duplicated. The usually staid Viennese press reported that the crowd on hand "went wild." One would never know that; Deutsche Grammophon's engineers have stripped out every trace of audience noise, and one wishes for traces of the excitement hearers must have felt as Wang swings from Albéniz to Scriabin to the Russian jazz of Nikolai Kapustin to Beethoven. All that is just in the first half of the show. One can try without success to figure out exactly what makes all this music hang together in Wang's hands; she is certainly one of the few pianists who could successfully follow etudes of Ligeti with one of Glass. The secret seems to lie in the detail she brings to each work. Consider her quick reading of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18 in E flat major, Op. 31, No. 3 ("The Hunt"), in which she turns the opening gesture, usually gentle, into the call of a hunting horn at the beginning of an active outdoor happening. It is the same throughout, and the music works because it is all done sensitively, and it coheres into what the booklet calls "a musical gallery." An impressive outing from Wang, who continues to live up to and even exceed the high expectations she has generated for herself through publicity. Completely unsurprisingly, this release made classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2024. James Manheim    Tracklist & Credits :

GEORG BÖHM : Complete Harpsichord and Organ Music (Simone Stella) 4CD BOX-SET (2013) FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

Spanning 4 CDs and presenting over three hours of absorbing listening, this charming release explores the musical output of Georg Böhm – one of the most important German organists and composers around the turn of the 18th century, and who is considered to have had a major influence on the training of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The compilation focuses on the main nucleus of Böhm’s output, his works for keyboard, and divides equally into those for harpsichord and/or organ. Of chief interest among the pieces for the former instrument are the 11 Suites, works that were probably written for domestic performance, and these are joined by a range of other genres also common to the period. From the French Overture style of the Prelude in F to the art of variation that is the Chaconne in G, Böhm’s compositions abound in inventive detail, and we soon move onto the works for organ – where the composer’s most important contribution to North German keyboard music, that of the chorale partita, comes to the fore.

Performing all these works is Simone Stella, one of today’s most celebrated early music specialists and whose discography already includes two recordings for Brilliant Classics (Buxtehude’s Complete Organ Music 94422; Buxtehude’s Complete Harpsichord Music 94312). The release offers a fascinating insight into what is perhaps a lesser-known facet of the Baroque repertoire, and is certain to delight keyboard music aficionados. brilliantclassics.com    Tracklist & Credits :

CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL Bach : Sonatas & Rondos (Marc-André Hamelin) 2CD (2022) FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

The music of C P E Bach makes complex stylistic demands of the performer like little else of its time, the extraordinary drama and intensity tempered by Enlightenment elegance and the influence of the Baroque. Marc-André Hamelin’s performances set new standards in this endlessly absorbing repertoire. hyperion-records.co.uk   Tracklist & Credits :