PPI's Recordings Roundup for April
As spring awakens the world with fresh light, we invite you to step into soundscapes rich with imagination, tenderness, and transformative beauty. These four stunning new albums reveal the piano’s capacity to capture everything from the hush of twilight to the pulse of a soul ascending toward heaven.
Each recording is more than music—it’s an invitation to feel, to wonder, and to rediscover the extraordinary landscapes of the human spirit.
Alice Sara Ott
John Field: Complete Nocturnes
(Deutsche Grammophon)
In her newest release, Alice Sara Ott turns her profound musicianship and emotional honesty toward the largely unsung John Field—the composer who gifted the world the nocturne. Immersing herself in these graceful, intimate pieces, Ott uncovers a universe of whispered secrets and shimmering twilight. Her playing is not only exquisitely tender but also offers the first full recording of Field’s nocturnes for Deutsche Grammophon, inviting listeners to experience the beauty and grace that once so deeply inspired Chopin and Liszt.
Leif Ove Andsnes
Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works
(Sony Classical)
Leif Ove Andsnes unveils a side of Franz Liszt often overshadowed by his dazzling virtuosity—the austere, searching beauty of Liszt’s sacred music. In Via Crucis, performed with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, Andsnes explores a world of profound humanity and spiritual reflection, where stark simplicity carries immense emotional weight. Completing the album are Liszt’s Consolations and selections from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, works suffused with tenderness, sorrow, and a luminous sense of devotion. In Andsnes’s hands, every note seems to sing with quiet, transcendent power.
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason
Fantasie
(Sony Classical)
In her radiant debut solo album, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason curates a vibrant journey across musical worlds, weaving the luminous harmonies of Debussy and the soulful depths of Florence Price into a seamless, personal narrative. Her artistry flows with the spontaneity of true improvisation, born from an intimate knowledge of each composer’s voice. Whether evoking the shimmering calm of Debussy’s Préludes or the heartfelt urgency of Price’s Fantasie in E Minor, Kanneh-Mason offers performances that feel at once deeply rooted and astonishingly free—an invitation to experience the piano as a living, breathing storyteller.
Aaron Pilsan
J. S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II
(Alpha Classics)
Five years after the success of his first volume, Aaron Pilsan completes his traversal of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier with a recording that reveals the second book’s playful complexity and extraordinary harmonic invention. Nowhere is his deep affinity for Bach more vivid than in the daring fugue in D-sharp Minor—a piece whose boldness and originality Pilsan finds endlessly enthralling. With luminous clarity and spirited insight, he brings to life a work that celebrates both the infinite order and the vibrant unpredictability of human experience.