Claire Huangci

Claire Huangci – Schubert – Meta (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 03:05:33 minutes | 1,53 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics

For her 10th anniversary with Berlin Classics, the US pianist Claire Huangci presents herself and her label with a weighty recording project, Schubert’s late sonatas D 894, D 958, D 959 and D 960, as well as the Three Piano Pieces D 946 and a selection of songs from Schwanengesang. She accompanies the baritone Thomas E. Bauer in four of the songs, and plays two in an arrangement by Franz Liszt. To be heard in a box with 3 albums under the title META. META stands for the importance of Schubert’s music in Claire Huangci’s personal and musical life. It is Schubert’s compositions, which she has played since her earliest youth, “that show my development, that reflect unconscious emotions”, as she writes in the booklet. Schubert’s music is “the music I would like to take with me to a desert island. Schubert has accompanied me through all times”, especially the late sonatas, which are at the centre of the META box.

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Claire Huangci – Trio Machiavelli: Ravel & Chausson (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:01:06 minutes | 611 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics

If you were to look for a link between Maurice Ravel and Ernest Chausson, there would first emerge the tragic fact that serious traffic accidents played a role in the lives of both composers. Ravel was unable to compose after a car crash. Chausson died at a mere 44 years of age due to a cycling accident, leaving a modest body of work. Like Ravel, Chausson never won the coveted Prix de Rome, and he consequently turned his back on the Paris Conservatoire.

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Claire Huangci – Rachmaninov: The Preludes (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:17 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics

After her recording of the “Nocturnes” by Frederic Chopin, Claire Huangci dedicates this new recording to another major project: “The Rachmaninov Préludes”. As a foretaste of the album, which will be released on September 28th, another track can now be heard in advance!

The 13 Préludes, Opus 32 number 6 in F minor is rather short with 1:22 minutes, but no less fascinating. It was composed in 1910 as part of a piano cycle comprising 13 Préludes, which was also Rachmaninov’s last.
Compared to the previous collections, many pieces of the 13 Préludes are musically more demanding and technically more complicated. The composer was now able to present 24 pieces and continue a tradition from Bach to Chopin.

With her penchant for large-scale projects, the Préludes by Rachmaninov were the next logical step for Claire Huangci. The 28-year-old has already been able to show “how to Rachmaninov” in numerous concerts. This is one of the last masterpieces of late Romanticism and a great challenge for pianists. Not so for Claire Huangci!

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Claire Huangci – Beethoven/Liszt: Pastorale (Symphony No. 6 for Piano Solo) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:42 minutes | 358 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics

The young American pianist Claire Huangci, winner of the first prize and the Mozart prize at the 2018 Geza Anda Competition, continuously captivates audiences with her “radiant virtuosity, artistic sensitivity, keen interactive sense and subtle auditory dramaturgy” (Salzburger Nachrichten). With an irrepressible curiosity and penchant for unusual repertoire, she proves her versatility with a wide range in repertoire spanning from Bach and Scarlatti, to Bernstein, Gulda, and Corigliano.

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Claire Huangci – Bach: Toccatas (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:51 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics

On her most recent album, the pianist Claire Huangci made her first discographic foray into the chamber-music world of Ernest Chausson and Maurice Ravel. Her latest album creates a musical link almost back to the beginning of her professional career, to her highly acclaimed Scarlatti album, and proves yet again that she has a very close relationship with Baroque repertoire: with Johann Sebastian Bach’s varied and sparklingly virtuoso Toccatas she has taken ownership of a rarely heard collection of works, in which she presents the entire emotional spectrum of the young adult Bach.

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Claire Huangci – A Chopin Diary (Complete Nocturnes) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:36 minutes | 1,87 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics

The American pianist Claire Huangci has gained followings in her native country, in Germany, where she was partly trained, and, to judge from the chart performance of this Chopin release there, in the United Kingdom. The Russian pianist Vladimir Krainev has said that she has the fastest fingers in the world, which is nothing to sneeze at. The album proclaims that it’s the first recording of Chopin’s complete nocturnes since Arthur Rubinstein’s, which it may well be, but that’s not necessarily a good thing: the nocturnes were not a cycle of works, and a lot of them are strongly similar to one another. This doesn’t work to Huangci’s advantage: her sunny, rather delicate tone is pretty consistent throughout, and 22 nocturnes is a lot. Huangci seems to recognize this when she overlays the album with a “diary” concept, actually a group of quotations from French poetry, each matched to one of the nocturnes. (The booklet isn’t particularly illuminating on how the choices were made or what their meaning for Huangci might be.) The strengths of the album are exactly as Krainev says: Huangci’s ornaments glitter and glide, and her playing certainly gives an idea of why there has been a fuss over this young player at a time when the American piano scene could use the boost.

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Claire Huangci – Domenico Scarlatti: Piano Sonatas (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:10:42 minutes | 2,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics

Asked what music she wanted to play on her second solo album, she shot back: “Scarlatti!”. And yet Claire Huangci is known as a consummate interpreter of highly virtuosic music. But even when reviewing her debut CD of tricky Russian ballet transcriptions, Ingo Harden in Fono Forum had this to say: “Over and above the seemingly effortless and euphonious realization of her programme, her playing has an amazingly wide spectrum of nuances in touch. Even a seasoned performer with decades of experience can hardly offer us a more imaginative and colourful ‘orchestra on the piano’.”

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