Nelson Goerner

Nelson Goerner – Liszt: Sonate en si mineur, Sonetti di Petrarca, Valse oubliée No.2, Étude “La leggierezza”, Rhapsodie hongroise No.6 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:06:40 minutes | 1,94 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

This is pianist Nelson Goerner’s twelfth recording for the Alpha Classics label. He devotes his new album to the solo piano works of Franz Liszt, with the famous Sonata in B minor as the centrepiece; nearly twenty years after his first CD of the sonata, he felt the urge to re-record it, following a series of critically acclaimed concerts. His talents as a storyteller and as a virtuoso with an eye for nuance are heard to marvellous effect in this monumental work, a veritable ‘musical action’ that undoubtedly belongs in the pantheon of the finest literature for piano. The programme is completed by excerpts from Liszt’s major cycles, including the Petrarch Sonnets from the Années de pèlerinage and the Hungarian Rhapsody no.6, along with the spectacular concert étude La leggierezza.

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Nelson Goerner – Albéniz: Iberia (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:39 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Debussy and Messiaen regarded Iberia as THE piano masterpiece of the twentieth century: ‘One’s eyes close, as if dazzled from having gazed upon too many images’, wrote Debussy in 1905. For Nelson Goerner too, this suite in four books, which evokes Andalusia and the working-class districts of Madrid, is a work of major stature: ‘I am of Argentinian origin, this music touches me, it is like an arrow that pierces me… From the sublime incantation that is Jerez , an invocation of the mysteries of night, to Lavapiès , famous for the pianistic difficulties posed by its polyphonic convolutions and hand-crossings, Albéniz’s music exudes a panache and a joie de vivre that, in my view, make it a milestone of supreme importance.’
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Nelson Goerner – Schumann: Kreisleriana, Op. 16, Symphonic Studies, Op. 13 & Toccata, Op. 7 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:15:35 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zig-Zag Territoires

After a notable Debussy recital hailed by the international press, Nelson Goerner continues his collaboration with Zig-Zag Territoires in the company of another composer: Robert Schumann.
On the programme: two emblematic works from Schumann’s universe: the Etudes Symphoniques, Op. 13 (including the posthumous etudes) and Kreisleriana, Op. 16, plus a short piece about which Schumann said that it was ‘the most difficult piece ever written’: the Toccata, Op. 7.
This new recording clearly demonstrates the fantastic range of Nelson Goerner’s talent, felicitously combining a highly rigorous approach; exceptional generosity and richness of sound.

“His technically secure playing displays a real feeling for the pieces’ ever-changing colours and for the logic leading one phrase into another, his tiny rhythmic adjustments never disrupting the flow.” –BBC Music Magazine

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Nelson Goerner – Debussy: Works for Piano (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:03 minutes | 853 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha

Argentinian pianist Nelson Goerner has paved a solo career for himself because of his brilliant and masterful interpretations of the standard repertoire for solo piano. In this album. Goerner is able to admirably interpret some of Debussy’s lesser-known piano works where he demonstrates his understanding of Debussy’s original intentions while at the same time bringing in his own signature sound.

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Nelson Goerner – Chopin: Nocturnes (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:48:11 minutes | 1,67 GB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

‘Sophisticated colourist and cerebral virtuoso though he is, Nelson Goerner nevertheless brings out the moments of weakness, the hesitations, the lightning passions in the labyrinth of Chopin’, wrote Diapason on the release of the Preludes in 2015 (Diapason d’Or, Choc de Classica). ‘Serenity’, ‘balance’, ‘clarity’, ‘phrasing’ are the key words that recur in reviews of the discs and concerts of the Argentine pianist, whose fifth solo release on Alpha this is. His latest venture is a complete recording of the Nocturnes, a highpoint of Chopinesque poetry. These twenty-one miniatures accompanied Chopin over a good part of his life, for he composed them between 1827 and 1848. They are tributes to Italian bel canto, expressing reveries but also complexity of feeling and a profundity that far transcends their apparent simplicity. Nelson Goerner’s feeling for melody and tempo works wonders in these pieces, which he recorded in the ideal surroundings of the Salle de Musique of La Chaux de Fonds

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Nelson Goerner – Brahms: Sonata No.3, Op. 5 & Variations on a Theme by Paganini (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 57:18 minutes | 869 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

This release, issued to mark the 75th birthday of the great pianist Nelson Freire in 2019, is hardly a typical album of encores. A good deal of it is devoted to a single composer, Edvard Grieg. Other composers are represented by multiple works, and there are substantial pieces like the Rachmaninov Prelude in B minor, Op. 32, No. 10, that would not fill the role of encore well. You might take the word “encore” in another way, though: to mean things reprised. Many of these pieces are ones Freire knows well, has played many times, and has explored at a truly breathtaking level of detail. The Grieg Lyric Pieces are not virtuoso works, and indeed are often played by amateurs, but you haven’t heard them played like Freire plays them, with each one a little study in phrasing and register. You could sample almost anywhere here, but try the first of the Shostakovich Fantastic Dances, Op. 5, which has an entrancing subtlety from the very first notes. Freire, a famed virtuoso, mostly avoids showpieces here, but, as if to say he hasn’t lost the ability, he does drop some in. The album is, then, an encore to Freire’s remarkable career, which isn’t over yet.

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Nelson Goerner – Claude Debussy: Estampes – Etudes Book II – Images Book I – L’isle joyeuse (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:03 minutes | 851 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zig-Zag Territoires

‘Obviously,from the interpreter of these pieces of all the pieces on this CD one expects skill and sensitivity.But there must be still more:a gift for colour;an ability to imagine decors;a vision of textures,of space.And also,for these pieces that are at once heir to and summing-up of a glorious tradition,a wide-ranging knowledge,a culture of the piano repertoire.The interpreter of the Études is situated at the finishing line of a marathon,that of the keyboard en blanc et noir.He or she must know everything,and play nearly everything.Nelson Goerner is one such pianist.’Dominique Jameux.

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