Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili was signed to the Sony Classical label in her early 20s after a series of major competition prizes and began a top-level international career. She has said that some of her interpretations are influenced by Georgian folk music. Buniatishvili's international renown comes in large part from her recordings. She was signed to the Sony Classical label and released her debut album, Khatia Buniatishvili Plays Franz Liszt, in 2011. Her 2012 release, Chopin, won the Echo Klassik Young Artists' Award. Buniatishvili has remained on Sony's roster, recording mostly core virtuoso 19th and early 20th century repertory. In 2020, she released the recital Labyrinth, featuring an eclectic program ranging from Bach to Philip Glass and Serge Gainsbourg.

“Unquestionably one of the greatest pianists of all time” is how Gramophone magazine has described Martha Argerich. Her relationship with the label goes back to 1965 and her victory at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Over several decades it has produced a rich catalogue of live and studio recordings, embracing a repertoire that spans three centuries, a diversity of genres, and collaborations with such figures as Charles Dutoit, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky and Itzhak Perlman. The complete recordings for EMI Classics, Teldec, Erato and Warner Classics are featured in this box.

Seit 1999 beweisen die Klazz Brothers, wie gut sich Klassik, Jazz und kubanische Musik miteinander verstehen. Für die acht Alben, die seit 2002 bei Sony Music erschienen sind, wurde das Trio u.a. zweimal mit dem ECHO-Preis in der Sparte „Klassik ohne Grenzen“ sowie mit einer Grammy-Nominierung ausgezeichnet. Nach „Classic Meets Cuba“ und „Mozart Meets Cuba“ gratulieren David Gazarov (Klavier), Kilian Forster (Bass) und Tim Hahn (Schlagzeug) nun auf ihrer neuen CD „Chopin Lounge“ dem polnischen Klaviergenie Frédéric Chopin zum 200. Geburtstag.

There are few rivals to match the dizzying ambition of Hyperon’s Romantic Piano Concerto series—in fact, few rivals in classical recording’s entire history. The ambition—to unearth, record and present the great romantic piano concertos of yesteryear—was vast, almost gothic in scale. The series runs to 235 works, 185 of them classified as piano concertos. For dedication, contributions to scholarship and enterprise it breaks all bounds.

Maria João Pires “shapes and colours every phrase, and with immaculate taste, and she makes sure the phrases end as eloquently as they begin,” wrote Gramophone in 1974. “She conveys not just the details but the relevance of every note to the whole … Best of all, she communicates everything she has discovered about the music, and it is worth having.” This Portuguese pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, Pires was one of the artists who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 5-CD box gathers together the recordings she made over the period from 1976 to 1985 and it reflects the consistent focus of her repertoire, with its special emphasis on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets and concertos, it contains works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, but also by Bach and Chopin.

I suppose if I had to choose a single recording coupling both of Chopin's concertos, it would be this one. Perahia is a sensitive, extremely persuasive artist who understands his own particular gifts better than anyone. He's not a muscle-bound virtuoso by any means–neither was Chopin, for that matter. All of Perahia's interpretations are finely graded, carefully prepared, and sensitive to the music's every nuance, but they never sound stiff or studied.

Chopin’s mazurkas are perhaps the most elusive branch of his output. Their most obvious and dangerous challenges to performers lie in their rhythmic subtlety. Of all his music, none is more intimately linked with the accents and inflections of the Polish language, but this isn’t to say that only Poles can do them justice. What they do require, though, is a rhythmic buoyancy and flexibility of line which transcends all national characteristics. Like Chopin himself, they are compounded of irony and paradox. The role of the second beat is crucial to all of them, and to their specific identity as dance music (though Chopin’s were never intended for dancing), yet if they’re to succeed in performance the pianist must neutralise the divisive menace of the bar-line, so that the last thing we think of is counting.

The first part of this recording (and the first playing I had heard Andsnes do) that I heard was the third sonata, a piece that has had a lot of recordings by the great pianists through the years. What struck me were two things: a sense of spaciousness, letting the music and the phrases "breathe", and, along with that, a sense of proportion. Andsnes, here and in other recordings I have heard of his, has the guts to _not_ show off, (although, clearly, he has the fingers to do so) but, more than any other Chopin pianist I have ever heard (with the exception of Moravec), somehow illuminates Chopin's phrasing in the most natural way.

"Jubilee Concert in Buenos Aires": On the afternoon of 19 August 1950, a young boy in short trousers climbed the steps to the stage of the Sala Beyer in Buenos Aires to make his piano début. 50 years later, Daniel Barenboim returned “to the scene of the crime” to give an ecstatically received recital at Teatro Colón which will go down in history as one of the musical events of the 21st century.

This set doesn't include all of Chopin's piano music because Artur Rubinstein didn't record all of it. (The Etudes are the most notable omission.) But it does include the last, and usually best, versions of all the Chopin he did record, along with three earlier versions. Other pianists have had other things to say about Chopin, and it's a mistake to think that any one performer can give you the complete picture of any music. But these performances, for the most part, are as good as we've come to think they are.

Hélène Grimaud is a formidably talented artist with strong, sometimes willful interpretive ideas. In her note to this disc, which is best read while drunk or under the influence of some hallucinogenic substance, she talks a lot about death and other things; but whatever her motivation she plays both of these works with an eye to their darkness and brooding melancholy. Some listeners may feel this suits the Rachmaninov sonata better than the Chopin pieces, and indeed Grimaud has a tendency to turn Chopin into “Chopmaninov”, offering the most unusual interpretation of the Second Sonata since Pletnev.

Founded 60 years ago by Menahem Pressler, Daniel Guilet and Bernard Greenhouse, the Beaux Arts Trio performed and recorded exclusively for Philips Classics until 1995. Celebrated for their outstanding chamber-music qualities, the Beaux Arts are one of the greatest ensembles in the history of recorded music. This special 60CD box set includes their extensive discography on Philips Classics and encompasses almost the entire piano trio literature.

To celebrate the epic recording career of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Deutsche Grammophon presents a comprehensive box set that brings together for the first time all of his recordings for DG, Decca and Philips; in addition to the Westminster/Melodija recordings from their archives. Presented with the original jackets, this limited edition 37CD box features legendary recordings with Karajan, Argerich, Mutter, Britten, Richter, Serkin and more!

This two-disc set, one of numerous crossover collections released by the Decca/Universal family of labels, bears the name of Russian pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy only in small print at the end of the list of pieces included. Newcomers to classical music can rest assured that they're getting a two-for-one bonus by purchasing Essential Chopin – not only an introduction to the Polish-French composer who helped elevate the small solo piano work to the pinnacle of musical art, but also a sampling of the talents of one of the great keyboard artists of our own time. Ashkenazy rumbles with power on the more extended Ballades and the "Revolutionary" Etude in C minor, Op. 10/2, while Chopin's lighter dance-rhythm pieces and lyrical Nocturnes sparkle under Ashkenazy's effortless hands.

Anyone who thinks that Chopin's nocturnes are not "technically" demanding has obviously never spent time studying them. They are quintessential Chopin and demand infinite attention to matters of touch, pedalling, and tone production from start to finish A hasty or shallow performance, such as might work with the Fantaisie-Imromptu, for instance, will not suffice here. To play them well is no small task and requires a great deal of emotional investment tempered by a controlled technique; fortunately Arrau is up to the challenge, as this recording attests.