Schönberg: Piano Works

The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, one of the leading figures in contemporary classical music and an insightful interpreter of the core piano repertoire, is now under contract with Alpha Classics, inaugurating this partnership with an album that has long been close to his heart: Schoenberg’s piano works. He has waited more than forty years to record them. As early as 1973, while studying at the Paris Conservatory as a winner of the Olivier Messiaen Competition, Aimard performed Schoenberg’s Op. 11 live on television. At a time when the composer’s music was often misunderstood, Aimard developed a lasting connection to its originality and expressive power. In this long-awaited recording, he traces the composer’s artistic development through five seminal piano works, from the expressionism of Op. 11 (1909) to Op. 33b (1931), which was written on the eve of Schoenberg’s emigration to the United States and reflects both the Brahmsian tradition and a world in flux.