I am old enough to remember when a performance or recording of Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata was an event. While a new recording may not yet be commonplace, neither is it rare. The young American pianist Reed Tetzloff has a great deal of competition, and one pianist, Marc-André Hamelin, has even recorded it twice.

With the arrival of this album in early January 2021, echoes of the Beethoven year are still resounding. Yet even though the composer’s piano concertos and sonatas were well tended to in new recordings throughout the 2020 anniversary...

This 1987 recording of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony with Gerard Schwarz leading the New York Chamber Symphony was rediscovered in 2017 by its original engineer Marc Aubort. He and the conductor have edited it for release, and the expression “better late than never” easily applies to the performance in hand.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so they say. It has been a while since I heard Phillip Kawin’s Beethoven Third Concerto with the Russian National Orchestra and the excellent Gerard Schwarz...

For Gerard Schwarz this is “a document of the time”, now released for the first time. So, I shall compare a famous other chamber orchestra recording also made in December 1987: Claudio Abbado with The Chamber Orchestra of Europe...

This well-recorded release is the best Schumann recital from an American pianist in years. Reed Tetzloff has a strong, assured technique; he is in total sympathy with Schumann’s idiom, and he has deeply thought through his interpretations of the four works on the program...

Phillip Kawin’s performances are always deeply considered: he follows in a lineage from Cortot and was influenced by Dora Zaslavsky Koch, a student of Bauer and Backhaus. Kawin’s reading of the Beethoven C minor concerto combines a strong grasp of structure with...

Approximately three minutes into the Allegro con brio, pianist Phillip Kawin commences his graceful and generous performance of Beethoven’s third piano concerto. With minimal melodrama and more playfulness and joy, the piece is highly colorful and emotive...

My last review of Phillip Kawin’s work (40:3) praised Kawin’s “subtlety, maturity, individuality, and musicality.” I have much the same reaction to his playing of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. He makes one tasteful, sensitive choice after another throughout his performance of the piece...

A new video release on the Master Performers label features a rendition of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3, recorded in January of 2018 at Moscow’s Rachmaninov Concert Hall...

Sometimes I regret that I don’t know everything. Oh, I’ve claimed that I do often enough; but usually the person I am talking to suddenly walks quickly across the street and pretends to be intensely studying the manure display in the window of the farm supplies store...

This debut recording by the Lyrebird Trio is a cause for celebration beyond its trifecta wins at the quadrennial Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition in 2013. Part of that award was a season at the renowned Banff Centre in Canada.

In the illuminating interview that serves as the program note for this release, Phillip Kawin clearly sets out his musical priorities: structural proportion and “balance between the many diverse elements,” coupled with a rich tone and singing legato...

Phillip Kawin gives us all the necessary elements that make the diminutive composer with a gigantic soul come to life. Although his phrasing is supple, he generates a relentless pulse, which lies at the foundation of most of Schubert’s compositions, giving a sense of the inevitability of an end...

We’re accustomed as reviewers to mention when a set of program notes is insightful or well written. Both are true for the notes to this Schubert album from Phillip Kawin, an admired faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music, a Schubert specialist as a performer, and an in-demand lecturer...

Sie setzt sich nicht in Szene, sie spielt. Und wie sie spielt, die 1991 geborene Marina Yakhlakova! Den Namen muss man sich merken, dahinter steckt ein echtes Talent, und er steht für reine Musikalität...

Moscow-based Marina Yakhlakova (b. 1991) captured first prize at the 2011 Franz Liszt International Piano Competition. Her teachers include Natalia Zdobnova at the Gnessin School of Music and Alexander Strukov at the Moscow State Conservatory...

C’est à travers Schubert et sous la forme d’un DVD que l’on découvre la jeune pianiste russe, Marina Yakhlakova. L’artiste de 23 ans explore deux répertoires distincts : la sonate et la transcription...

Where Tchaikovsky winner Trifonov left Russia for the United States, Marina instead chose the Moskow Conservatory where she studied with Alexander Strukov and recently graduated with the Red Certificate, the school’s highest honour for artistic and academic excellence...

Phillip Shovk is considered to be one of Australia’s foremost concert pianists, chamber musicians, accompanists, adjudicators and teachers. After studying at the Sydney Conservatorium High School with George Humphrey and graduating with the Frank Hutchens Prize...

Five Rocks in a metaphorical reference to five Japanese composers, whose activities during the last half century have passed largely unnoticed outside their own country. Which provides us with an opportunity to explore “some exciting new discoveries”...

Queenslander Colin Noble studied piano with Isobel Grigor during his school years and then with two legendary pianists; Pamela Page and Larry Sitsky. He holds Honours and Masters Degrees in Performance and undertook his PhD at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music...

The steady, beautifully articulated singing, secure diction and intonation of Saunders reminds one of the voices of the British singers of the 1930s – voices like that of Gervase Elwes, the most distinguished singer of English art-songs; but with the addition of passionate conviction...

Hoang Pham, in his middle twenties, is at that slightly awkward stage in his career when garlanded with a number of honours – best Australian pianist at the Sydney competition, winner of the Lev Vlassenko competition...

Music brought into the spotlight by the young Adam Gordon Herd, and coming from Coffs Harbour as he does, where sunshine is a major part of the deal, there is a good deal of wattage condensed into the spotlight he wields...

Although one cannot dismiss any of Beethoven’s music as trivial, the Bagatelles, op 7 fall into the category of ‘trifles’ despite their elegance. This was the purpose of their composition...

Anyone attracted to the repertoire on this CD find it richly rewarding. It contains one of Haydn’s finest Sonatas (once memorably recorded by Glenn Gould), Mendelssohn’s Variations Serieuses, a Chopin Nocturne, two brief pieces by Debussy...

Adam Herd may be sporty, but he’s also a superb pianist, as his debut release proves. Adam Herd is a young prize-winning pianist from Coffs Harbour. Don’t be misled by the “country-and-western” cover shot, or the bio that stresses his interest in sport and surfing...