Sonatas & Etudes

“…22-year-old Yuja Wang is a wondrously gifted pianist whose debut album… suggests a combination of blazing technique and a rare instinct for poetry. In Scriabin's Second Sonata she is beautifully sensitive to the moods, whether tranquil and starlit or tempestuous, reflecting the composer's love of the Baltic Sea. She is fiery but never reckless in Chopin's Second Sonata... As a crowning touch her Ligeti Etudes are both musicianly and dazzlingly incisive. In the words of the publicist, "a star is born".” --Gramophone Magazine, August 2009

“The opening movement of Chopin’s Second Sonata certainly identifies qualities of youthful impetuosity, power and dexterity.” --The Telegraph, 25th June 2009 ***

“The Scriabin (sonata no 2) flows nicely; in the Liszt B minor sonata she’s no empty virtuoso. A talent worth watching.” --The Times, 23rd May 2009 ****

“…Yuja Wang… has all the equipment to be one of the most exciting pianists of her generation. As well as a stunning technique she has a fabulous range of sonority and colour… the two Ligeti Etudes, especially 'Fanfares', suit her dazzling fingerwork perfectly. Pianistically, parts of her Liszt Sonata are extraordinary, with blistering octaves, razor-sharp articulation and a wonderful tonal richness.” --BBC Music Magazine, July 2009 ****

Live at the Royal Albert Hall

“there's an admirable lightness of touch and appreciation of rhythmic flow to her "Für Elise", and her negotiation of Liszt's "Un Sospiro" is captivating.” --The Independent, July 2012 ****

“genuine gifts for lyricism and dazzling display...those musical gifts quickly hit the ears on this closely recorded CD.... Track three is Liszt’s La campanella, intelligently shaped, its bell sounds glittering as rarely before...Lisitsa tends to play with the lights fully on, with not enough shading in the wide expanse between loud and quiet. This gets rather tiring...But at the moment there is only one Valentina Lisitsa.” --The Times, July 2012

Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Valentina began playing the piano at the age of three and performed her first solo recital just one year later. She has won prestigious awards for her playing internationally, including the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition (together with her husband Alexei Kuznetsoff).

Valentina Lisitsa has already performed at major international venues including Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York and the Vienna Musikverein, and in countries as far apart as the Netherlands and Brazil. She has played with renowned orchestras including Chicago Symphony, Seattle Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony, collaborating with conductors Manfred Honeck, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, among others. Upcoming performances are confirmed with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Philharmonie im Gasteig, Munich with Münchner Symphoniker and recitals at the Victoria Hall in Geneva and Philharmonie in Berlin.

With more than 43 million views and over 52,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, the young pianist is not only one of the fastest-rising stars of the international concert scene but probably the single most-watched classical musician, having rapidly overtaken long-established giants of the piano world in terms of global online viewing figures.

Chopin: Cello sonata & Transcriptions for Cello & Piano

“What is most impressive about this performance is the exquisite pianissimo both achieve, while maintaining a perfect tonal balance. The old complaint that the dense piano part dominates simply does not apply here: Stott's touch is so gossamer-light, the engineers had no need to throw the cello forward unnaturally.” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 ****

“It would be hard to imagine a more powerful account of the Sonata than this one” --Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

Truls Mørk (cello) & Kathy Stott (piano)

“Chopin's compositional output did not include a great deal of chamber music, but what he did write included a number of pieces for cello. From this one could assume he had a special affinity for the instrument. In this recording, we have taken this a step further by choosing transcriptions of music originally written for solo piano - pieces with a strong melodic line which seem to transport themselves to the cello so beautifully.” Truls Mørk