“You know, he is still a great sax player,” I tell myself while listening to Abdullah Ibrahim’s ‘Celestial Bird Dance,’ the opening number of his 2015 Sunnyside release,The Song Is My Story. A series of solo explorations – two on saxophone, fifteen on piano – , the disc is a...

This recording on Hyperion’s mid-priced Helios imprint was made in 1998. If you missed it the first time around, you can, and should, remedy that now. The music is performed by long-time Hyperion artist, Marc-André Hamelin, a pianist who time and again has exposed the extraordinary...

As it is played here, the complete piano music of Arvo Pärt takes about two hours to perform and fits neatly on these two Brilliant Classics CDs. I’ve qualified this statement with “as it is played here” because some of the music is rather improvisatory, leaving much to the...

The sparkling opening bars of “Russian Gems” define the program of this Musical Concepts CD, one that is superbly performed by Sicilian pianist Sandro Russo. The concept behind this project is to “showcase the Romantic tradition in Russian music” (Russo), and features...

In this program of rarely heard 20th century piano pieces by seven Hungarian composers, pianist Mariann Marczi performs over an hour of music that has factored prominently in her academic studies and performing career. The album takes its name from the opening work, Splinters, Op. 6/d by...

Right from the opening track, Dreaming, by Josef Bohuslav Foerster, it amazes that this superb release from Brilliant Classics is the first time the composer’s solo piano music is appearing on CD. J. B. Foerster (as he is often referred to) was a Czech composer, eighteen years the junior...