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Artist: Jan Lisiecki
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Jan Lisiecki:

prelude

The New York Times, reviewing Lisiecki’s Preludes programme at his Carnegie Hall recital debut in March 2024
Can a recital be composed entirely of preludes, by definition and tradition introductory works, and still be profound? This was the question pianist Jan Lisiecki pondered while conceiving his current recital programme, which forms the basis for his latest Deutsche Grammophon recording. In his capable hands, the answer, clearly, is yes, as listeners will discover from an album that compares and contrasts Chopin’s exceptional Op. 28 cycle with preludes by Bach, Rachmaninoff, Messiaen and Górecki. Jan Lisiecki: preludes comes out in all formats today. 

As Lisiecki notes, it was Chopin who transformed the prelude into a genre in its own right, “embracing its ability to establish a mood and be taken out of context, so to speak”. The 24 preludes of Op. 28, showcasing each key in turn, were the starting point for his recital programme and album and his recent live interpretations have garnered critical acclaim. Reviewing his Wigmore Hall recital in July, Bachtrack hailed “a landmark performance” which “demonstrated the finest qualities of this much admired pianist: a keen poetic sense, good taste and an unflashy technical strength”.

Lisiecki underlines the way in which Chopin set the prelude free by including two more examples by the composer. The album opens with the light and lively Prelude in A flat major, KK IVb/7, and also features the much longer and more meditative Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 45.

If Chopin was the initial inspiration, Lisiecki’s intention was always to set his preludes in musical and historical context, by examining the way others have imagined the genre. He begins by going back to Bach, whose Well-Tempered Clavier inspired Chopin’s Op. 28. Lisiecki has chosen the first two Preludes from Book I, in C major and C minor respectively. “It was a difficult choice, because I’m merely presenting a glimpse of the vast depth of Bach’s keyboard repertoire,” says the artist. “In his Well-Tempered Clavier, he developed the format of prelude and fugue, but suddenly to listen to these preludes as standalone pieces offers a distinctly different experience, and one that I hope the audience will enjoy.”

Rachmaninoff is an obvious successor to Chopin in taking the prelude and exploiting its standalone potential. Lisiecki plays two works from his Op. 23 set – No. 3 in D minor and No. 5 in G minor, as well as the famous early work in C sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2. “Chopin and Rachmaninoff both used the piano’s singing quality to create long musical phrases,” notes Lisiecki. “The outstanding technicality in Rachmaninoff is contrasted by his lyricism, his extraordinary ability to write musical lines.”
Messiaen too experimented with the genre as a way of exploring different states of mind, with no introductory intention. He wrote a set of eight Preludes when he was just 20, the first three of which – “La colombe” (“The Dove”), “Chant d’extase dans un paysage triste” (“Song of Ecstasy in a Sorrowful Landscape”) and “Le nombre léger” (“The Light Number”) – are included here. 
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The most recent works on the album are the first and last of Górecki’s Four Preludes, Op. 1 (1955), previously unknown to Lisiecki. “I always love meeting new composers and finding new pieces – and presenting them to an audience,” he says. On the album, he places Górecki alongside Bach: “The music exudes the same vitality and energy while being of the 20th century, creating juxtaposition between the modern and the traditional.”

Jan Lisiecki:

Night Music

Jan Lisiecki? presents a brand new eAlbum and Visual Album inspired by Night Music

“A player of exceptional poise and refinement.” - BBC Music Magazine

Following a critically-acclaimed recording of Chopin's Complete Nocturnes, which cemented his status as one of classical music’s favourite pianists, Jan Lisiecki presents a brand new digital and visual album inspired by Night Music, released today 18 February. With this project, the Canadian-born pianist and former Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, continues to explore the universe of night music with works by Mozart, Ravel, Schumann and Paderewski.

"I love putting together programmes. I love taking the audience on that journey with me." says Lisiecki. "It’s so much more meaningful than just playing works that I love. I still love these pieces, but I love how they go together as well. And that’s how 'Night Music' was born." The album, which features a selection of tracks from Lisiecki’s Würzburg recital in 2018, is also available in the immersive sound format Dolby Atmos and complemented by a visual album.

"To me a recital programme, just as much as my recordings, has to have a concept and has to have some force that is holding it together" adds Lisiecki, who is currently touring his Poems of the night programme in Germany and continues to enjoy a busy concert diary with upcoming dates in Poland, France, Canada and the United States. "After all, how can you put together Schumann and Ravel and Mozart? It’s impossible – in aspects of trying to find a link. So you have to create a musical link. And in this case it was music of the night, and showing the multifaceted world that it exists in."

Jan Lisiecki:

Chopin Complete Nocturnes

For his eighth and latest Deutsche Grammophon album, Canadian pianist extraordinaire Jan Lisiecki has chosen to return to the music of Frédéric Chopin. Following on from Works for Piano & Orchestra (2017) and Chopin: Études (2013), Chopin: Complete Nocturnes is now set for international release on 13 August 2021 and features profoundly personal interpretations of some of the most beautiful and best-loved pieces ever written for solo piano. 

Lisiecki is perhaps most celebrated for his masterfully sensitive and refined interpretative approach. His newest release – recorded last October at Berlin's historic Meistersaal – not only captures the spirit of Chopin's pianism, but also represents the time and circumstances in which it was made, as the pianist himself explains: "I'm the first to question why we should record something that has been recorded many times before. But music only lives through performance and is different every time we hear it, even when it's a recording. I think there was something for me to say with this album. It reflects on the last year and my thoughts on that as well as on the escape and understanding that music gives us." 

Jan Lisiecki:

Beethoven Complete Piano Concertos

In anticipation of Beethoven's 250th birthday in 2020, Jan LIsiecki presents a full cycle of Beethoven's five piano concertos, accompanied by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 has particularly played a significant role in Lisiecki's career. In 2013, he performed the work with Orchestra Mozart under Claudio Abbado in Bologna, replacing an indisposed Martha Argerich at short notice, and he performed the same work at his Carnegie Hall debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. 

Jan Lisiecki:

Mendelssohn w/Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Acclaimed 23-year-old Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki joins forces with the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to release Mendelssohn on Deutsche Grammophon on February 1. The album explores a pair of early Romantic masterpieces: Mendelssohn's Piano Concertos in G minor and D minor, complemented with a selection of Mendelssohn's most brilliant pieces for solo piano: the Variations sérieuses, the Rondo capriccioso and the "Venetian Boat Song" from the Songs without Words.

Felix Mendelssohn was a year younger than Lisiecki is now when he wrote his First Piano Concerto in G minor; the work was dedicated to the seventeen-year-old pianist Delphine von Schauroth. Cast in three movements, it is a lively, spirited work, at times requiring lightning-quick playing. Lisiecki finds it remarkable that the concerto begins as if "in the middle of a piece," and particularly appreciates the buoyancy of this early work – he thinks of it as like "a nature trip" and notes that its "lightness of touch ... reminds [him] very much of playing Mozart." 

Jan Lisiecki:

Chopin - Works for Piano and Orchestra

Jan Lisiecki's Chopin: Works for Piano and Orchestra, set for international release on 10 March 2017, comprises pieces in the so-called "brilliant style," a form of virtuosic pianism cultivated in the early 1800s by some of the leading performer-composers of the day, including Hummel, Kalkbrenner and Moscheles. During his formative years in Warsaw, Chopin applied the style to such works for piano and orchestra as the Grande Polonaise brillante Op.22 and Rondo à la krakowiak in F major Op.14. The notion of brilliance likewise governs his Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" from Mozart's Don Giovanni Op.2 and the Fantasy on Polish Airs Op.13.

Jan Lisiecki:

Schumann

Jan Lisiecki turns to the music of Robert Schumann for his third Deutsche Grammophon album. The 20-year-old Canadian pianist presents strikingly mature and imaginative interpretations of the composer's complete concertante works for piano and orchestra. Jan Lisiecki: Schumann – Works for Piano and Orchestra, set for international release on 8 January 2016, opens with the evergreen Piano Concerto in A minor op. 54. It also contains the Introduction and Allegro appassionato op. 92, Träumerei op. 15 no. 7 and the rarely heard Introduction and Allegro op. 134, the latter entering the DG catalogue for the first time in the yellow label's 117-year history. Lisiecki is partnered by the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Sir Antonio Pappano, with whom he made his debut at the 2013 BBC Proms in Schumann's Piano Concerto. "This proved to be a performance of extraordinary accomplishment," noted the Guardian at the time.