Trois mouvements de Petrouchka is an arrangement for piano of music from the ballet Petrushka by the composer Igor Stravinsky for the pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Stravinsky is very explicit in stating that …
Vladimir Horowitz, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, Yuja Wang, Daniil Trifonov, Hélène Grimaud, Khatia Buniatishvili, Glenn Gould, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Lang Lang… they all play a Steinway & Sons piano. Why?
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 3 in D minor was written in Dresden and completed on September 23, 1909. The concerto was first performed on Sunday afternoon, November 28, 1909, by Sergei Rachmaninoff himself.
The Chorale Prelude in F-minor is part of the Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) BWV 599−644, a collection of 46 chorale preludes for organ written by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major (K. 488) is a composition for piano and orchestra written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was finished, according to Mozart’s own catalogue, on March 2, 1786, two months prior to the premiere of his opera, Le nozze di Figaro
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (Heart and mouth and deed and life), BWV 147, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. The music of the chorale movements is now best known for the piano transcription.
One of Frédéric Chopin most famous masterpiece, the Prelude No 15 in D-Flat Major, nicknamed “Raindrop”, strikes one at first as an oasis of peace and calm. However, the transition from the bright key of D flat major to the tenebrous C sharp minor brings dark, gloomy, disturbing sonorities.
The Piano Concerto No 5 by Beethoven, popularly known as the Emperor Concerto, was his last completed piano concerto. It was written between 1809 and 1811 in Vienna, and was dedicated to Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven’s patron and pupil.
Prelude No. 24 in D Minor is the last one of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, a set of short pieces for the piano, one in each of the twenty-four keys, originally published in 1839.
