Vestards Šimkus begann mit fünf Jahren Klavier an der Musikschule Emīls Dārziņš in Riga zu lernen.

Après un premier album sur Artalinna dédié à cinq sonates parfois rares composées en 1943, Jocelyn Aubrun, ici rejoint par la pianiste Ursula Alvarez Heredia défend la musique pour flûte et piano d’une des personnalités les plus importantes du Paris du début du XXe siècle, Philippe Gaubert. Les trois Sonates et la Sonatine, et deux petites pièces de charme, témoignent d’une verve compositionnelle souvent surprenante, témoignage des multiples esthétiques en vogue à l’époque.

Pour son troisième album Artalinna, après Haydn, Schumann et Sterndale Bennett, le Japonais Hiroaki Takenouchi nous invite à redécouvrir trois cycles méconnus de variations, dont la somptueuse et très ambitieuse Ballade de Grieg, composée dans les années 1875-1876 et inspirée d’un chant populaire populaire norvégien de la région de Valdres qui se situe à mi-chemin entre Bergen et Oslo.

A multi-faceted array of Prokofiev is Cuban pianist Marcos Madrigal's offering for this second solo recording of his for Artalinna/Academy Productions. First, the Visions fugitives Prokofiev composed between 1915 and 1917 when still in his mid-twenties – fleeting, blink-and-you've-missed-it character pieces, many of whose multifarious moods (not least irony and ambiguity) and styles would reappear in his music over the ensuing decades. Then the Piano Sonata No. 5 in C major, Op. 38/135, heard here in its original 1923 version rather than its more often-performed 1953 revision. Then finally the famous Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 83, completed in the early 1940s.

A formidable interpreter of the works of Robert Schumann, the German pianist Severin von Eckardstein here offers an intense version of rare narrative force of one of the most complex cycles of the 19th century, the Davidsbündlertänze Op. 6. This dazzling kaleidoscope of moods is embedded with works by Chopin and Tchaikovsky, of particularly passionate resonance. Great musical moments that confirm Severin von Eckardstein’s status as one of the most poetic musicians in the world of the piano.

In programming terms alone, this America-themed programme from Latvian pianist-composer and former Pēteris Vasks pupil Vestard Shimkus is extremely nicely put together. Philip Glass's Mad Rush serves as the curtain-raiser – a work originally created and performed on the organ of New York's cathedral of St. John the Divine in honour of the Dalai Lama's 1979 first public address in North America, but now largely performed on the piano. Onwards, and Shimkus leads us through a succession of hops back and forth between the 20th and 21st centuries, beginning with Charles Tomlinson Griffes' Piano Sonata, sitting as a pleasingly organic segue despite its much earlier composition date of 1917, thanks to its own concise, abstract language (in fact “wandering in the nowhere” was how Musical America's bemused Herbert Peyser described it when it first appeared).

Yumeto Suenaga, a Franco-Japanese pianist invites us on a most inventive journey, in the heart of late Beethoven, combining great architectures such as the Diabelli Variations or the last sonata for keyboard, Op. 111, and miniatures, sometimes even very short sketches. A true thought in motion unfolds here. Yumeto Suenaga also reveals two works by the French composer Isabelle Fraisse: 111, a tribute to the 32nd Sonata, taken from Three Dialogues with the Work of Beethoven, and the fruit of a most original enterprise, the 3 Moqueries on a Waltz by Diabelli.Franco-japonais, Yumeto Suenaga nous invite à un périple des plus inventifs, au cœur du Beethoven tardif, combinant grandes architectures telles les Variations Diabelli ou la dernière sonate pour clavier, l’Op. 111, et miniatures, parfois même des esquisses très brèves. C’est une véritable pensée en mouvement qui se dévoile ici. Yumeto Suenaga révèle en outre deux œuvres de la compositrice française Isabelle Fraisse : 111, un hommage à la 32e Sonate, extrait des Trois Dialogues avec l’oeuvre de Beethoven, et fruit d’une entreprise des plus originales, les 3 Moqueries sur une valse de Diabelli.

Philippe Guilhon-Herbert, being especially attuned to the twilight elements in Schubert’s music, was eager to press ahead with his exploration of the composer’s later works, following a very well received recital in 2013, in which he brought together two very sombre and complex pieces, Sonatas D. 784 and D. 958. The cornerstone of this programme is the second of the last three sonatas (D. 959), to which he added three pieces from three other major Schubert collections, the Impromptus, the Klavierstücke and Moments musicaux. Once again Philippe Guilhon-Herbert masterfully immerses us in the heart of German romantic Sehnsucht, that unique, poignant state of mind, between yearning and melancholy.

Cette quatrième parution du pianiste français Philippe Guilhon-Herbert sous étiquette Artalinna, enregistrée lors de la même session que le second volume Schubert au sein duquel figure la Sonate D. 959, propose une petite histoire de l’art de toucher le clavier, avec trois compositeurs phares, et du rôle fondamental que le regard sur la nature a pu jouer dans l’évolution des formes et des langages.