Études op. 25 & 4 scherzi

Description

Her latest recording won a Diapason d’Or of the Year and a Choc Classica of the Year, and the brilliant pianist Beatrice Rana returns with an exceptional album devoted to Chopin. One of the greatest piano records of the past 10 years! Beatrice Rana is one of the most prominent young pianists in today’s piano world (her latest recording of Ravel/Stravinsky won a Diapason d’Or of the Year and a Choc Classica of the Year). The young Italian has never stopped broadening the circle of her admirers around the world, both through her dazzling technical means and through her powerful interpretations in search of the deep meaning of the works she tackles, as well as the richness of her sonorities. With the Études and Scherzos by Chopin that she presents today, Beatrice Rana combines rigor, freedom and flawless musicality, bringing out the mysteries hidden behind the immediate appeal of these works so often performed. Chopin’s Études are two books, each containing twelve études for piano, published by the Franco-Polish composer Frédéric Chopin in the 1830s: the first, Op. 10, dedicated “to his friend Franz Liszt,” and the second, Op. 25, dedicated “to Madame la Comtesse d’Agoult.” A former student of Benedetto Lupo in Monopoli and Arie Vardi in Hanover, Beatrice Rana first came to prominence after her great victory at the International Competition of Montreal. After a first Prokofiev/Tchaikovsky album on Erato/Warner, the pianist offered the Goldberg Variations in a recording praised by the press in 2016, followed by the present Ravel/Stravinsky release. Born in Italy into a family of musicians, Beatrice Rana began studying piano at the age of four. At nine, she was already performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in F minor with orchestra. Later, she joined Benedetto Lupo’s class at the Nino Rota Conservatory in Monopoli, where she also studied composition with Larco della Sciucca and graduated at sixteen. At twelve, she received a scholarship from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, in recognition of her incredible and precocious talent. She then continued her training at the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover with Arie Vardi. Winner of numerous international prizes (Muzio Clementi, International Competition of San Marino, PianoRAMA Bang & Olufsen), she attended masterclasses in France, Italy and the United States with masters such as Aldo Ciccolini, Michel Beroff, Eliso Virsaladze, Andrzej Jasinski and François-Joël Thoillier. Beatrice Rana’s career took a new turn in June 2011, when she won First Prize as well as all the jury’s special prizes at the prestigious Montreal International Musical Competition, at just 18 years old. This victory enabled her to record Chopin’s Preludes and Scriabin’s 2nd Sonata, for a CD released by the Canadian label Atma. In 2013, she won the silver medal and the audience prize at the 14th edition of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In September 2015, she was named a “BBC New Generation Artist” and in April 2016, she won a grant from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust.