PPI's new recordings roundup for June
With the official start of summer on the horizon, we're celebrating all the lazy days in the hazy sun that lie ahead — and all the romances that are kindled (or rekindled!) during the season of love.
This month, join us as we dive deep into albums that make the heart flutter and the mind swoon with works of the Romantic period:
Simon Bürki's debut album, overflowing with achingly tender selections from Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and more
Luisa Imorde's brilliant readings of piano concertos by Clara Schumann and Carl Maria von Weber
and a fabulous reissue of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words from the legendary Walter Gieseking
SIMON BÜRKI
REMINISCENCE
The up-and-coming Swiss pianist Simon Bürki makes an astonishing first impression on his debut disc — a survey of mesmerizing music that displays his ability to create rainbows of vibrant color at the keyboard. Among the fabulous assortment of Romantic miniatures the pianist assembles here are Rachmaninoff's dreamy Vocalise and Liszt's hypnotic Love Dreams (Liebesträume), which fly off the page with rapturous intensity under Bürki's capable hands.
LUISA IMORDE
PIANO CONCERTOS
Hot on the heels of last year's critically acclaimed mashup of Couperin and Messiaen, Polychromie, Luisa Imorde's latest album finds her scaling the majestic heights of two superb Romantic concertos: Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor and Carl Maria von Weber's First Piano Concerto. Backed by the Bremer Philharmoniker, Imorde imbues each moment with passionate lyricism and tender professions of love.
WALTER GIESEKING
MENDELSSOHN'S SONGS WITHOUT WORDS
This reissue from Warner Classics brings us one of the last recordings the great Walter Gieseking made in 1956, just weeks before his untimely death. Bringing together 50 of the lavish musical poems Mendelssohn penned over the course of 16 years, the album reminds us of the ways Gieseking can spin long, florid lines into moments of bliss and enchantment, as well as the grace, sensitivity, and vitality he brings to these miniature pearls — as if he were improvising the music on the spot.