Alexandre Kantorow

Alexandre Kantorow, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Jean-Jacques Kantorow – Liszt: Piano Concertos (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:02 minutes | 954 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

As a teenager, Franz Liszt created at least two virtuosic concertos for piano and orchestra, scores which now are lost. The three works gathered here first saw the light of day only a few years later, however, during the 1830’s when Liszt’s career as a young, travelling virtuoso was at its height. The two numbered concertos, which Liszt revised extensively before letting them be published some 25 years after their conception, frame the single-movement Malédiction for piano and strings which Liszt composed in 1833 and revised in 1840, but which was never published in his lifetime. Stepping into Liszt’s shoes for the present recording is Alexandre Kantorow, another very young man. Born in 1997, Alexandre is here supported by his father Jean-Jacques Kantorow conducting the Tapiola Sinfonietta, a team with a number of highly acclaimed recordings to their credit. The recording is Alexandre’s first for BIS, as well as being his début concerto disc, and represents a remarkable achievement by a hugely promising talent, as well as being a vibrant and exciting account of three impassioned scores.

(more…)

Alexandre Kantorow, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Jean-Jacques Kantorow – Saint-Saëns: Works for Piano & Orchestra (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:45 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

In 2019, Alexandre and Jean-Jacques Kantorow’s recording of the last three piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns earned the highest praise around the world, including a “Diapason d’or de l’année”, “Editor’s Choice” in Gramophone and top marks and recommendations from the leading German websites. The Kantorows’ orchestra of choice was the Finnish ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, and they have now returned to Helsinki to record not only Saint-Saëns’ first two concertos, but all of the remaining works for piano and orchestra.
(more…)

Alexandre Kantorow, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Tapiola Sinfonietta – Saint-Saëns: Piano Concertos Nos. 3-5 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:37 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the Tapiola Sinfonietta have championed the music of Saint-Saëns on a series of acclaimed discs, and are now joined by the young Alexandre Kantorow –son of the conductor – for a survey of his works for piano and orchestra. In 1858, Saint-Saëns became the first major French composer to write a piano concerto, but on this first disc of two the Kantorows present the three last concertos. Composed over a period of almost 30 years (1868 – 1896), these are highly individual works: Piano Concerto No. 3 is a bold attempt to reconcile Classical form with a Lisztian pianistic brio, No. 4 employs an unusual formal scheme in which themes are reused in a cyclic manner and, finally, the ‘Egyptian’ (No. 5), named after the second movement, which in the composer’s own words describes ‘a sort of Eastern journey that goes all the way to the Far East’.
(more…)

Alexandre Kantorow, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Jean-Jacques Kantorow – Saint-Saëns: Works for Piano & Orchestra (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:45 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

In 2019, Alexandre and Jean-Jacques Kantorow’s recording of the last three piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns earned the highest praise around the world, including a “Diapason d’or de l’année”, “Editor’s Choice” in Gramophone and top marks and recommendations from the leading German websites. The Kantorows’ orchestra of choice was the Finnish ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, and they have now returned to Helsinki to record not only Saint-Saëns’ first two concertos, but all of the remaining works for piano and orchestra.
(more…)