Barry Douglas – Schubert: Piano Music, Vol. 6 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Schubert: Piano Music, Vol. 6 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Schubert: Piano Music, Vol. 6 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:15 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

This sixth volume in Barry Douglas’s acclaimed Schubert series features two major works. The Sonata in A minor, D 845 was completed in 1825, just before Schubert started work on his ‘great’ Symphony in C major. As in so much of his later writing, Schubert is pushing at the boundaries of sonata form, particularly in terms of the harmonic variation he introduces throughout the piece. The second movement takes the form of a theme and variations, as does the third piece of the second major work on the album, the Four Impromptus, D 935. Published after his death in 1828, they were composed in 1827 and, like the Sonata, show all the trademarks of late Schubert.

The programme is completed with Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’ – a sparklingly virtuosic homage to this famous theme, demonstrating once again Barry Douglas’s extraordinary technical facility.

The album was recorded on a Steinway model D in the Curtis auditorium of the MTU Cork School of Music in Ireland.
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Barry Douglas – Celtic Reflections (2014/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Celtic Reflections (2014/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Celtic Reflections (2014/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:56 minutes | 891 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Barry Douglas is best-known for his celebrated performances of great works central to the classical repertoire, not least through his acclaimed Brahms and Schubert series on Chandos. In his new album Celtic Reflections we hear another side to his musical life. Playing his own arrangements, he explores the melodies of his native Ireland, from ancient folk tunes passed down through the ages to pieces by contemporary songwriters. He is joined by the talented young flautist Eimear McGeown who, as well as being an accomplished classical player, is a renowned and passionate exponent of the traditional Irish flute which she plays in this recording.
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Barry Douglas – Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Volume 3 (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Volume 3 (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Volume 3 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:24 minutes | 982 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos Records

Barry Douglas returns for the highly anticipated third volume in his series devoted to Brahms’s solo piano music, the first two volumes having been met with widespread critical acclaim. Of Vol. 2, International Record Review wrote, ‘this is indeed Brahms playing of the utmost integrity and authority… this cycle looks set to become a benchmark’.
The selected Intermezzi performed here come from the collections of short piano pieces which Brahms published in 1892 – 93, his last works for piano. A sense of wistful, melancholic reflection pervades these exquisitely crafted masterpieces of Brahms’s late maturity.
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Barry Douglas – Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 5 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 5 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 5 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:09 minutes | 968 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

This album is the penultimate in what BBC Music has described as a ‘triumph of Brahmsian thought’, namely the survey by Barry Douglas of the composer’s complete works for solo piano.
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Barry Douglas – Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 4 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 4 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 4 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:58 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

This is Volume 4 in Barry Douglas’s monumental project to record the complete works for solo piano by Johannes Brahms. Each volume has been released to critical acclaim, the first one, in 2012, being seen by BBC Music as ‘a triumph of Brahmsian thought, with playing that gets right to the heart of the composer’.
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Barry Douglas – Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 3 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 3 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 3 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:36 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

For the third volume of his musical tribute to Russia, Barry Douglas has selected a range of love songs and dances by Tchaikovsky that span much of his composing life. From the early Romance, Op. 5 through to the two pieces from Op. 72, his last works for the piano, there is a uniform singing quality, each piece redolent with Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody. Although many of these are relatively short pieces, they are certainly more than “miniatures”, conveying both breadth and depth of emotional substance. This volume’s “plus one” comes in the guise of Prokofiev and his virtuosic transcription of ten pieces from his best-known ballet, Romeo and Juliet. Vividly capturing the colour of scenes and characters with the relatively limited palette of the solo piano (compared to the full orchestra) is in itself an outstanding achievement, and Barry Douglas’s fearless interpretation dazzles from start to finish.
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Barry Douglas – Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 2 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 2 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:08 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Tchaikovsky’s Grande Sonate, in G major was dedicated to Karl Klindworth, and first performed at a private hearing in 1879, by Nikolay Rubinstein, founder of the Moscow Conservatory. Composed in the autumn of 1896, the Six Moments musicaux of Rachmaninoff adopt musical forms from previous eras: the nocturne, song without words, barcarolle, virtuoso étude, and theme and variations. Written in haste in order to meet the commission deadline (the twenty-three-year-old Rachmaninoff was desperately short of funds), the set evidences his virtuosity, and is full of portent of the music to come. Barry Douglas writes: ‘This recording project with Chandos Records is a personal salute from me to great masterworks of the Russian repertoire. I am an Irish pianist who, nevertheless, feels a deep affinity with Russian culture, and felt it even before I had the good fortune to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1986. Our own Irish composer and virtuoso pianist John Field, who invented the Nocturne and taught a whole generation of Russian musicians, fermented the linkage between Ireland and Russia, and I feel very proud to help keep this synergy alive!’
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Barry Douglas – Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 1 (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 1 (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Tchaikovsky Plus One, Vol. 1 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:46 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Two of the most popular romantic Russian piano works from the mid-1870s are heard on this new album from the celebrated Barry Douglas.

Lyricism lies at the heart of the twelve movements of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons (1875 – 76), commissioned by the periodical Nouvelliste to appear monthly, accompanied by poetic epigraphs. Tchaikovsky got his servant to remind him of his duty on a certain day in the month, and composed each piece in a single sitting. Each reflects characteristics of a different month, the style is simple, the mood introspective.

While the poetic aspect of The Seasons was prompted by the individual musical contributions, Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) was provoked by a visit which Mussorgsky made to an exhibition of sketches and paintings by his late friend Viktor Hartmann. The technically demanding memorial, a popular genre in Russian romanticism, is here played thoughtfully and sympathetically by Barry Douglas.
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Barry Douglas – Schubert: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 4 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Barry Douglas - Schubert: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 4 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Barry Douglas – Schubert: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 4 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:40 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Barry Douglas’s critically acclaimed series of Schubert’s piano works reaches its fourth installment.

For this recording, Douglas has chosen to present three piano sonatas from the middle of Schubert’s short life: No. 5 (D 537) and No. 11 (D 575), both composed in 1817, complemented with the Sonata No. 15 (D 664), composed just two years later.

The three sonatas all spring from a period when Schubert was experimenting with tonality, both in the sense of less usual keys (D 575 is in B major) and in terms of the relative keys of the movements, and of sections within movements.

Irrespective of this experimentation, Schubert’s incredible talent for melody and lyricism shines through each of the works, and is masterfully heightened in Douglas’s interpretations.

Like the previous three volumes in the series, the recording was made on a Steinway Model D in the Curtis Auditorium at the CIT Cork School of Music.
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