Peter Donohoe

Peter Donohoe – Peter Donohoe Plays Granados & Albéniz (2024) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:50 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classique, Musique de chambre, Piano solo
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover

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Peter Donohoe – Peter Donohoe Plays Granados & Albéniz (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:50 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Claude Debussy wrote of Albéniz’s compositions: ‘Never has music attained such diverse impressions and colours. One closes one’s eyes and is dazzled by contemplating so many images.’ Iberia certainly fits this description beyond doubt, with its vivid evocation of Spain. Composed between 1905 and 1909, the collection is divided into four books, each containing three pieces. Book I opens with ‘Évocation’, which combines the southern Spanish fandango with jota song forms. ‘El Puerto’ was inspired by El Puerto de Santa María, in Cádiz, whilst ‘Fête-dieu à Séville’ depicts the Corpus Christi Day procession. ‘Rondeña’ and then ‘Almería’ are both depictions of Andalusian towns, and are followed by ‘Triana’, which evokes the Gypsy quarter of Seville. Goyescas, begun in 1909, reflects Granados’s admiration for the paintings of Goya. (Granados went on to compose an opera of the same name). Considered by many to be Granados’s masterpiece, the suite for piano comprises two books and was completed in 1911. The collections by Albéniz and Granados are truly virtuosic pieces, placing extreme demands on the pianist. Peter Donohoe makes light work of the challenges, and presents his selection in deeply musical readings that are typical of this supreme artist. The album was recorded on a Steinway model D concert grand piano at Potton Hall, in Suffolk.

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Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:01:02 minutes | 948 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

The much anticipated second volume of Peter Donohoe’s complete survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas for SOMM Recordings focuses on three sonatas produced during the composer’s ill-fated journey to Paris in 1777.
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Peter Donohoe – Busoni: Toccata, BV 287, Elegien, BV 252, Sonatina No. 6, BV 284 & Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C Major, BV B 29 No. 1 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:57 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Peter Donohoe CBE studied at Chetham’s School of Music and Leeds University before going on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique. He first came across the works of Busoni in the early 1980s and, as he states in his booklet note, “Busoni’s contribution to the musical history of the twentieth century is inestimable, and I feel very much enriched by the several decades of my exposure to it”.
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Peter Donohoe – Rachmaninoff: Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op. 22 – Chopin: Piano Sonatas, Opp. 35 & 58 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:35 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the return of pianist Peter Donohoe to the label, following his acclaimed complete survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, with a dazzling new recital coupling Rachmaninoff – on the 150th anniversary of his birth in 1873 – and Chopin.

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Peter Donohoe – Mendelssohn: Songs without words, Vol. 2 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:29 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Lieder ohne Worte – Songs without Words – seems to be a description invented by Mendelssohn himself for these short, lyrical and descriptive piano pieces which he composed so prolifically. Indeed, it is arguable that these works define his pianistic output in the same way that the Mazurka defines Chopin’s. Publishing them in sets of six, Mendelssohn composed Lieder ohne Worte throughout his career – they proved a type of composition to which he had a lifetime attraction. For the first volume, rather than approaching them chronologically or as complete sets, Peter Donohoe selected pieces to build a satisfying programme. Here he does the same with all the pieces that remain. In addition, the album features three free-standing significant works. The 17 Variations sérieuses, from 1841, is one of Mendelssohn’s largest solo piano works, and was published in an album to raise funds for a monument to Beethoven. The Phantasie on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ is a much earlier work, based on the Irish folk melody that – with added words by the Irish poet Thomas Moore – took Europe by storm in the early 1800s. The album concludes with Rachmaninoff’s piano transcription of the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

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Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 6 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 59:49 minutes | 897 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

SOMM Recordings’ acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas by Peter Donohoe reaches its end with Volume 6 featuring four works illustrating the composer’s endless fascination and creative invention with the piano.

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Peter Donohoe – Haydn: Keyboard Works Vol. 1 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:33:56 minutes | 2,45 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Classics

“Cradling his programme of Sonatas in a set of strongly contrasted Variations and a Divertimento, Peter Donohoe takes an enlivening slant, a sense of ‘rediscovery’ of Haydn’s ambiguity, indeed, unique character” – Bryce Morrison

Since his success as joint winner of the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition, Peter Donohoe has gained international renown as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

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Peter Donohoe – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 5 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:17 minutes | 956 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

SOMM Recordings’ survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas by Peter Donohoe nears its end with “Volume 5” featuring three works from very different periods of the composer’s life.

The earliest Sonata No. 3 in B-flat major, K. 281, from 1775, shows the 18-year-old composer in effervescent mood, nimbly drawing on French and Italian influences, with a cadenza composed by Donohoe for its Rondo finale. From January, 1788, the latest Sonata No. 15 in F major, K. 533/494, is an ingenious exercise in compromised creativity. Finding himself short of time, Mozart revised an earlier Rondo for the finale to two chromatically rich original movements caught between the Salzburg Serenades he was keen to leave behind and the aria-like coloratura he hoped would appeal to audiences.

A decade earlier, the Sonata No. 13 in B-flat major was composed in Paris as Mozart reeled from the death of his mother and the failure of his bid for success in the French capital. His only consolation had been an encounter with Johann Christian Bach, from whom Christopher Morley says in his authoritative booklet notes, he “learned balance and dialogue (the characteristic answering to an assertive masculine opening statement by a yielding, delicate feminine response…) and these qualities inform K. 333”.

This SOMM’s “Mozart Sonatas” survey has attracted superlative reviews.
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Peter Donohoe – Tchaikovsky: Solo Piano Works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:52 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Classics

Tchaikovsky’s contemporaries tell us that he was good enough to become a concert pianist, if he had chosen to follow that path. But he preferred to focus on composition, and rarely performed in public concerts. His interest in the piano is mainly to be found in his many pieces for the instrument, and since most of these were suitable for amateurs with solid skills, they sold well and played an important role in building up his fame. Despite this, some view Tchaikovsky’s solo piano works as poor quality. Peter Donohoe disagrees, insisting that all music requires performers to find the right approach, so he does not see Tchaikovsky as any kind of exception. He writes:

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