Evgeny Kissin

Evgeny Kissin & Emerson String Quartet – The New York Concert (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 19, 2023 · Comments off

The mysterious virtuoso and world-renowned soloist and recitalist Evgeny Kissin doesn’t often venture into the realm of chamber music. The Emerson Quartet were therefore presented with a unique opportunity when they were offered to do an eight-concert tour of Germany and the United States with the famous pianist. For this album, Deutsche Grammophon decided to record their last performance together at Carnegie Hall in New York on April 27, 2018 and after much deliberation the decision was finally made to perform two major pieces in a minor key. The first is Mozart’s famous Quartet in G minor, and for the second we delve into the world of romanticism with just a hint of nostalgia with the young Gabriel Fauré’s Quartet in C minor. The concert ends with Dvořák’s light-hearted and joyful Quintet in A major, with its undertones of Czech folklore. No musician tried to steal the show as the collective priority seemed to be performing these masterpieces classically. The musicians work together humbly and cooperatively in an intimate atmosphere that feels more like they’re in a living room than a legendary concert hall. – François Hudry

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Evgeny Kissin – The Salzburg Recital (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 7, 2022 · Comments off

Evgeny Kissin’s sensational recital at 2021’s summer Salzburg Festival. The Salzburg Recital builds dramatic tension across a compelling programme of music by Berg, Chopin, Gershwin and Khrennikov. An adventurously idiosyncratic concert program, the first half of the recital uniting three early 20th-century composers from wholly contrary musical traditions: Austria, Russia and the United States. The second half of the recital is devoted entirely to the music of Frédéric Chopin on whom Kissin noted, ‘the longer I live, the more I feel that his music is closest to my heart’. After Alban Berg’s incredibly expressive Piano sonata, the rhythmic vitality and light-footedness of Gershwin’s Three Preludes for Piano with their vibes of Charleston, blues and foxtrot are standing next to the meditative nature of three of Chopin’s Impromptus and a brooding Nocturne. Kissin combined them most intriguingly with pieces of Russian composer Tikhon Khrennikov, showing the surprisingly modernist nature of his early compositions. A most memorable programme culminates in three encores containing Debussy’s ‘Clair de lun’, a composition of Kissin himself and one of Mendelssohn’s ‘Lieder ohne Worte’.

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