Lang Lang delivers his first-ever Beethoven recording, a stunning reading of the extensive Concerto no. 4 and the jubilant Concerto no. 1. Even though he has performed this repertoire extensively in concert, Lang Lang waited for the perfect moment and the perfect team to record his first pair of concertos from these milestones of piano repertoire When Lang Lang embarked on his international career, Christoph Eschenbach became one of his first and most enthusiastic proponents - and a mentor and close friend ever since, Eschenbach was the ideal collaborator for Lang Lang's first Beethoven recording.

Nicolai Lugansky’s solo disc debut for Erato is more than just another recording of the Chopin etudes by a new virtuoso on the block. He’s got fingers, to be sure, but also a mind, an ear, and more than a little imagination. The pianist guides Op. 10 No. 1’s arpeggio sequences with a pliable, singing bass line, and offsets Op. 10 No. 2’s murmuring right-hand 16th-notes with intelligently shaped left-hand chords. Similarly, your ear gravitates more toward Op. 10 No. 7’s playful left-hand accents and dynamic jolts rather than to Luagnsky’s suave dispatch of the right hand’s rapid double notes.

Joachim Raff (1822–1882) was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the foremost symphonists of his age, but in his extensive oeuvre of 329 compositions over half of them are for the piano. This selection of 21 works offers a cross section of the best of this large catalogue for the instrument, chosen by acclaimed Raff interpreter Tra Nguyen to showcase the varied aspects of his art. Raff’s melodic generosity, his piquant harmonic sensibility and ravishing textures are all on display in these pieces which span the whole of his career, from the exuberant Douze Romances to the majestic Grande Sonate.

Most of this disc is taken up with Liszt's Christmas Tree, an unusually modest suite based on Christmas carols. It also offers charming pieces by Reger, Tchaikovsky, Rebikov, and Lyapunov based on Christmas themes, and a couple of Bach transcriptions. Eteri Andjaparidze, whose first CD was a sensational Prokofiev collection, plays this music truly superb musicianship and the kind of pianistic color that has become a rarity. Her Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring is the most beautiful I've heard since Dinu Lipatti's. And wait until you hear her delightful playing of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride! It's deliciously witty and charming.

A Very Chilly Christmas, featuring Feist and Jarvis Cocker. Composer, showman in slippers and a bathrobe, he has a deep dedication to his craft: he’s an Entertainer. His humble service to this calling lends a certain inevitability to this announcement: Chilly Gonzales has made a Christmas album.

Lamar Crowson was most famous as pianist with the melos ensemble of London. The clementi sonatas, regularly studied by piano students, but now increasingly the province of repertoire at piano competitions and major recitals, is still very rare on CD. The two l'oiseau-lyre lps making up this 2 cd set have never before been issued on CD.

After the Second Piano Concerto (Alpha 395), Nelson Goerner presents here his first solo Brahms recital with the Sonata op.5, a youthful composition that is ‘impetuous, full of ardour and vitality’, says Goerner, ‘but which requires an interpreter who has reached maturity in his or her development to express all that it contains’.

A tribute to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, a veritable mythic and unpredictable Italian pianist,; a perfectionist with a carefully chosen repertory in which Scarlatti's works joined those of Debussy and Ravel, while the great German romantics, from Beethoven to Brahms, were magnified and exalted, showing the soundness of their construction. The number of his recordings is limited, with mostly works by Debussy and Ravel and a few by Beethoven. He used to buy pirate live discs of his concerts as presents for his friends instead of his 'official' recordings! Here is a French anthology collecting legendary renderings of his inimitable touch easy to recognise by its ductile nature and the purity of his style. A revived masterpiece.

An anniversary accolade with a twist: one hundred and fifty years after his birth, this is a wonderful recital of some of the many works dedicated to Leopold Godowsky. It’s difficult to imagine more persuasive performances than these by Andrey Gugnin, who makes a second appearance on Hyperion after his universally—and vociferously—acclaimed Shostakovich.

An album of Joseph Haydns (17321809) eight delightful early keyboard sonatas by Tuija Hakkila performed on two fortepianos. The current consensus is that there are about 60 surviving authentic Piano Sonatas by Haydn, while contemporary sources point to as many as 80. The earliest of these probably date from Haydns youth in the 1750s; the last one was completed in summer 1795. Some of the lost Sonatas are works that Haydn simply gave away as a young man, and they have never been heard of since. In mid-18th-century Vienna music was mainly distributed in the form of manuscript copies made by copyists. Haydn did not publish his first collection of six Sonatas until 1774. Of the Sonatas selected for this project, Haydn wrote all of these over a period of about 15 years before his 40th birthday.

This Pierian CD, advertised in the May 2012 Naxos catalog as an “also available” disc, is the label’s first issue from 2000 featuring the complete recordings of Debussy as pianist. All of his records were made in two sessions, a series of four short 78-rpm sides with soprano Mary Garden (his first Mélisande) at the Paris G&T studio in 1904 and 14 Welte-Mignon piano rolls recorded on November 11, 1913. Both are famous groups of recordings, restored and reissued over the decades, but this release is the best I’ve ever heard them.

Liszts Études represent a peak in the history of piano writing. Beyond the tremendous technical difficulties, Liszts Études are poetic works, études tableaux, suggesting programme music influenced by literature, painting, and folklore as can be identified by titles such as Mazeppa, Wilde Jagd, Gnomenreigen or Feux follets. Similar to Schumann, Liszt added those lyrical appellations as an afterthought to stimulate the fantasy of both the listener and the performer, thus paving the path to modern piano playing as we know it today.

Études are primarily intended as exercises to train musicians in specific techniques, but since the Romantic era they have become associated with other miniature forms, such as the prelude and the intermezzo, and frequently regarded as evocative character pieces or tonal pictures. Garrick Ohlsson's album of piano études by Claude Debussy, Sergey Prokofiev, and Béla Bartók offers a brief survey of the genre in modern practice, and demonstrates the blending of pedagogy and poetry in these works. Ohlsson has become internationally known as an exquisite interpreter of the music of Frédéric Chopin, and much of the subtlety and atmosphere found in his previous recordings is present here. Ohlsson's finesse and humor are perhaps most evident in Debussy's Études, L. 143, which have a lighter character than Prokofiev's Études, Op. 2, which tend toward the sardonic side, and Bartók's Études, Op. 18, which are intensely virtuosic and mysterious. Hyperion's recording captures the nuances of Ohlsson's playing, and the piano is close enough to hear every detail, while the acoustics lend it a pleasant natural aura.

Recorded live in September 1987, this release features Florentins legendary complete survey of Rachmaninoffs solo piano works. an utterly mindblowing release of the complete Rachmaninoff solo piano music by Italian master pianist Sergio Fiorentino, to whom the piano world owes a huge debt of gratitude for coaxing the master out of retirement and ensuring that his last decade of concerts was recorded. In this set, we find in absolutely stunning sound quality Fiorentinos masterful traversals of Rachmaninoffs solo works, the golden sheen of his sound and refinement of his nuancing as captivating as his passionate and intelligent interpretations. (The Piano Files)

Passion rather than insouciance is Pires’s keynote. Here is no soft, moonlit option but an intensity and drama that scorn all complacent salon or drawing-room expectations. How she relishes Chopin’s central storms, creating a vivid and spectacular yet unhistrionic contrast with all surrounding serenity or ‘embalmed darkness’. The con fuoco of Op. 15 No. 1 erupts in a fine fury and in the first Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 1, Pires’s sharp observance of Chopin’s appassionato marking comes like a prophecy of the coda’s sudden blaze. Such resolution and psychological awareness make you realize that Chopin, like D. H. Lawrence, may well have thought that “there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life”. Chopin, Pires informs us in no uncertain terms, was no sentimentalist.