New recordings from Ruth Slenczynska, Lara Downes, Valentina Lisitsa
Here are three new albums to check out and add to your playlist. The highlights include 97-year-old Ruth Slenczynska's return on the Decca label after six decades; Lara Downes releases an all-Joplin disc which is unusual for a pianist of her calibre; and Valentina Lisitsa's first all-Scriabin album on the Naïve label.
RUTH SLENCZYNSKA
MY LIFE IN MUSIC
Ninety-seven-year-old Ruth Slenczynska returns to Decca after six decades and records brand new album, My Life in Music. Slenczynska is the last living pupil of Rachmaninoff and a colleague of Samuel Barber. (The full album is out on March 18. One track available now.)
LARA DOWNES
NIGHT MUSIC REFLECTIONS: SCOTT JOPLIN RECONSIDERED
Iconoclastic pianist Lara Downes takes a fresh look at the music of Scott Joplin (1868 – 1917) on her album Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered, the newest release in her Rising Sun Music series, which brings to life the rich, 200-year lineage of Black composers in America.
VALENTINA LISITSA
SCRIABIN
Lisitsa marked her debut on the Naïve label on January 7th with a release commemorating the 150th anniversary of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin’s birth. The Scriabin program includes eighteen short pieces spanning his body of work, from his early anthology of 24 preludes – modelled after those of Frédéric Chopin – to works like the frenzied “Flammes Sombres” written in 1914, just one year prior to his death.