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Compact Discs

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Klezmerola
Rare Jewish music from
Piano Rolls: 1916-27

Brooklyn Baroque
Pleasures of the French
Northern Lights
J.S. Bach: Works for Flute

Wolf Trap Chamber Group
Wild, Shumsky, Curtis

Goldfingers
Historic concert for
four pianos, presented
by the Van Cliburn Foundation

Masters of the Keyboard
Miami Int'l Piano Festival
of Discovery, Vol 1 & 2

Van Cliburn Competition
Retrospective Series

Vol. 1 - Groote - In Memoriam
Vol. 2 - 1977 Competition
Vol. 3 - 1969 Competition
Vol. 4 - 1962,1969 Competition
Vol. 5 - 1985 Competition
Vol. 6 -1989 Competition
Vol. 7 - 1973 Competition
Vol. 8 - 1981 Competition

Vol. 9 - 1993 Competition


The Catalan Piano Tradition

Liszt 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies
Played By 19 Great Pianists


Johann Strauss
- Virtuoso Piano Transcriptions


Greatest Hits of Christmas
Classics; greatest artists!

Artist By Last Name:

Baker
, Julius
Julius Baker In Recital
Julius Baker In Recital, Vol. 2


Flute Force: "Pastorale"
- featuring Julius Baker


Barere, Simon
My Father was Simon Barere

Bakamjian, David
Boismortier Sonatas for Cello
and Other Instruments


Caramiello
, Francesco
Music From America

Darré
, Jeanne-Marie
The Early Recordings

De Maria, Pietro
De Maria, Pietro

Fitz-Gerald, Kevin
Plays Liszt

Fliter, Ingrid
Plays Chopin
Plays Beethoven & Chopin

Frisardi, Nicola
Brahms Piano Cto. No. 1
& Four Ballades Op. 10


Fuchs, Joseph
Joseph Fuchs In Recital


Gabrilowitsch, Ossip
Issued and Unissued Recordings

Gavrylyuk, Alexander
Live in Recital, 2005
Live in Recital, 2007

Gekic, Kemal
In Concert

Gieseking, Walter
Walter Gieseking
Plays Beethoven
Gieseking Plays Debussy

Haendel, Ida
In Recital
Historic Return to Chelm

Hofmann
, Josef
Complete Josef Hofmann, v. 1
Complete Josef Hofmann, v. 2

Complete Josef Hofmann, v. 3

Complete Josef Hofmann, v. 4


Itin
, Ilya
In Recital

Johannesen
, Grant
Faure: Complete Piano Works, v.1

Kappel
, William
William Kapell In Concert
William Kapell, Vol. 2

Kipnis, Igor
His First Solo Recordings

Korevaar, David
Brahms Variations

Goldberg Variations
Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Kuleshov, Valery
Plays Liszt


Libetta
, Francesco
Presenting Francesco Libetta
Libetta in Lecce
Libetta Plays Beethoven
Piano Duos
The Art of Finger Dexterity
Mussorgsky & Balakirev
Pozzoli: Studies
Liszt: 12 Symphonic Poems for
Live in Fort Lauderdale
Piano Duos
d ’Avalos: Compositions
Scarlino: Compositions
Music of Bach and Battiato

Lovchinsky,
Igor
Debut Recording

Malfitano
, Joseph
Duet for Voice and Violin

Moravec, Ivan
Plays Beethoven
Plays Mozart, Beethoven
& Brahms


Moskovitz, Marc
Cello Music Of David Popper
Alfredo Piatti - Siciliana

Neiman, Adam
In Recital
Early Mozart Concerti

Nyireghazi
, Ervin
At The Opera

Oldham, Kevin
Out Of The Depths
The Choral & Organ Music

Pechefsky, Rebecca
Krebs Sonatas for Flute & Harpsichord
D'Agincour: Harpsichord Wks, v 1

D'Agincour: Harpsichord Wks, v 2
Bach and his Circle
Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1

Perez, Vanessa
Presenting

Renard,
Rosita
At Carnegie Hall

Reisenberg,Nadia
100th Anniversary Tribute

Reyes
, Alberto
Plays Chopin
Plays Schumann

Rose,
Leonard
In Recital

Rosand
, Aaron
In Norway

Saperton, David
Plays Chopin & Godowsky

Scarlino, Eriberto (and others)
Scarlino: Compositions

Stallman, Robert
Incantations

Sultanov, Alexei
Live in Japan

Tureck, Rosalyn
Live At The Teatro Colón
Goldberg Variations
Partitas 1, 2, 6
Great Solo Works
Great Solo Works, v.2
The Young Firebrand
The Young Visionary
Tureck Première Performances
Bach Harpsichord Recital
Rosalyn Tureck Col., v. 5
Live in St. Petersburg

Votapek, Ralph
Debussy

Wallace
, Vita and Ishmael
Walter & Pfitzner
Sonatas for Violin & Piano

Wild
, Earl
In Concert, Vol. 1
Rachmaninoff Solo Works
Earl Wild: Living History
Earl Wild at 30
Earl Wild at 88!
Rachmaninoff: Song Transcr
Plays Chopin Ballads & Scherzos
Piano Music of Medtner
Plays Beethoven
Etudes Op. 10, 25 & Nouvelles Etudes
Mozart Music for 2 Pianos: Wild & Parkinson
In Concert
Legendary 1981 Baldwin Recs
Paderewski, Scharwenka Piano Cts
Earl Wild in Concert, Vol. 2 - Concertos 
Wild Performs His Own Works

 

 

Alberto Reyes Plays Chopin
VAI Audio 1271-2 $16.99 (Two CDs for the price of one)

A recital of masterworks of Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) featuring the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35; Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58; Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52; Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49, and the Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Alberto Reyes made his recital debut as an eight-year-old in 1956. In 1966, he came to the US on a grant to study at the Indiana University School of Music. Reyes has toured to great acclaim in the U.S. and Canada, the Soviet Union, South America, and Russia. His playing reflects the influence of two major piano schools of the early twentieth century. In Uruguay, his teacher was Sarah Bourdillon, who throughout the 1930s studied at Alfred Cortot’s Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. In Bloomington, his mentor was the American pianist Sidney Foster who, along with Jorge Bolet, Shura Cherkassky and Abbey Simon, studied with David Saperton at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which was then under the aegis of legendary pianist Josef Hofmann. In the words of the pianist, this recording affords him “the unique opportunity to engage in a double dialogue with the works themselves and with every other artist and commentator who have played or written about them.”

Click here to watch Alberto Reyes play the first movement of Chopin's Sonata in B minor, Op 58 taped during the recording sessions for this CD set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUwVRNYATAk

From International Record Review - February 2010

Chopin: Piano Sonatas – No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35, ‘Funeral
March’; No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58. Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49. Ballade
No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52. Barcarolle in F sharp, Op. 60. Alberto Reyes
(piano). VAI Audio VAIA1271/2 (medium price, two discs), 1 hour 28
minutes). Website www.vaimusic.com. Producer/Engineer Richard Price.
Dates May 28th-31st, 2009.

Comparison: Rubinstein (Medici Arts) 3078548 (1964, DVD)

Alberto Reyes introduces his two-disc set of Chopin masterpieces with
a booklet essay, ‘Why another Chopin recording?’. In it, he alludes to
a series of pianists – ranging from Gould, Steuermann, Hofmann,
Moiseiwitsch, Cortot, Rosen and Michelangeli, to Chopin himself – who
could scarcely be more disparate. If this diverse line-up weren’t
enough to alert the listener that a musical experience of some
sophistication is in store, glancing references to Delacroix, Theodor
Adorno, Freud and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster should remove
any doubts. Reyes scrupulously points out his few departures from
Chopin’s text – some bass doublings here, some broken chords there –
lest anyone be shocked. Quite frankly, Reyes is all too modest in this
charming, keenly intelligent essay. The robust beauties of his
remarkably original interpretations need no justification.

A word about Reyes himself may be appropriate here, since his career
trajectory has been nothing if not unconventional. Born 62 years ago
last month in Montevideo, he studied in his native Uruguay with the
Cortot pupil Sarah Bourdillon. His advanced studies were at the
University of Indiana, Bloomington, under Sydney Foster. By the early
1970s he had garnered several prizes on the international competition
circuit and made his New York and Moscow recital débuts. In 1976 Reyes
made a volte-face, pulling back from concertizing and settling in New
York to work as a simultaneous translator for the Security Council and
General Assembly at the United Nations. Fortunately for the rest of
us, during that demanding career, Reyes continued to play. In 1988,
the New York Times accorded one of his rare concerts the closest thing
to a rave review that any pianist is likely to receive in that piano-
weary town. Since his retirement from the UN in 2007, Reyes seems
again susceptible to the lures of the stage; and, I might add, not a
moment too soon.

Stylistically speaking, there’s a great deal in Reyes’s playing that
harks back to the ‘grand manner’. His sound is unapologetically round
and luxurious and, once launched, his beautiful cantabile soars in an
infallible arc. Tempos tend toward the spacious and sections are
vividly contrasted. The overarching sweep of a work’s formal structure
is emphasized above focus on detail. Asynchronicity of the hands and
broken chords occasionally serve to clarify polyphony or heighten
expressive nuance but always within the realm of good taste. Above
all, in each work there is an incontestable point of view, an
expressive intent devoid of any ambiguity, that lends these
disarmingly direct readings their singular authority. Reyes being so
completely who he is, comparisons are difficult. Warmer than Arrau,
more personal than Freire, less facile than the urbane Novaes, Reyes’s
sweep is somehow reminiscent of Rubinstein, that last great master of
the ‘grand manner’, who may be heard and seen in some of the same
repertoire on a DVD of his 1964 Moscow Conservatory concert.

Listening to a Chopin scherzo, one often has the impression of a horse
bolting from the gates; all expressive content is reserved for the
trio, which seems a distraction before the start of the next race. Far
from this common, fleet ‘Art of Finger Dexterity’ approach, into which
a soulful nocturne has been plopped by accident, in the scherzos in
both sonatas Reyes gives rhetorical elegance its full due. Gesture and
contour are never sacrificed to speed and when the pulse slows, the
trio unfolds with intensified eloquence. Refreshingly, each scherzo
emerges as a seamless, integrated whole. Speaking of speed, it is hard
to imagine a less note-y Presto finale of the B flat minor Sonata than
this. It is as though an apparition, little more than a contour,
scarcely perceptible, ephemeral, were racing toward the terrifying
cataclysm of the final cadence, the Furies in hot pursuit. At the
opposite end of the kinesthetic spectrum is the Olympian calm of the B
minor Sonata’s Largo. Here, rhythmic pulse and harmonic scaffolding
are perfectly subordinated, holding aloft a spinning cantilena that
grows more heart-rending with each elaboration. The Barcarolle,
Fantasy and the F minor Ballade all share with the sonatas this same
intensely personal, deeply felt music-making and élan vital.

Though I’ve known a number of extremely competent musicians who were
either hopelessly neurotic or colossal bores, I think it’s true
nevertheless that the musical persona is inseparable from the human
being. With regard to Reyes, one wonders if his ‘second career’ –
during which he witnessed close- hand global reactions to two Gulf
Wars, the disintegration of the Balkans and demise of Apartheid, blood-
drenched agonies in the Middle East, the aftermath of Pinochet in
Chile, and 9/11 – has not somehow informed, tempered, enriched or,
perhaps, even ennobled his piano playing. Whatever the aetiology of
his artistry, Reyes’s return to a public career can only be met with
open arms.

Patrick Rucker

"His performances of the two mature sonatas, fourth ballade, Barcarolle and Fantasy are deeply personal, imaginative, straight from the heart, and reminiscent of the grand manner of a bygone era"

 - Patrick Rucker (“Fanfare”)

"...playing of unusual distinction. Alberto Reyes does not seek to dazzle with his Chopin, instead treating the ears to rich, deliberate and supremely lyrical playing"

 - Peter Burwasser (“Fanfare”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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