Nelson Freire ENCORES

Legendary Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire celebrates his 75th birthday with a new album, a delightful collection of personal piano favourites.

The new record, ‘Encores’, contains 30 tracks ranging from Purcell to Rachmaninov; Scarlatti to Shostakovich and 12 of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces. It also includes such treasures as the Sgambati Mélodie de Gluck, Paderewski’s Nocturne and Albéniz’s Navarra.

An exclusive Decca artist since 2002, Nelson Freire won the 2006 Gramophone Recording of the Year and the Latin Grammy for Best Classical Album in 2013.

Nelson Freire BACH

Nelson Freire has long been seen as a connoisseur’s pianist, but a series of superb recordings have raised his profile to the extent that he is now thought of as one of today’s universally recognised great musicians. Whether playing the great warhorses of the repertoire or the gentlest miniatures, he brings to his performances a level of quiet thoughtfulness that puts him in a class of his own.

Born in Boa Esperança, Brazil, he began piano lessons at the age of three with Nise Obino and Lucia Branco, who had worked with a pupil of Liszt. He made his first public appearance at the age of five playing Mozart’s Sonata K. 331. In 1957, after winning a grant at the Rio de Janeiro International Piano Competition with Beethoven’s Emperor concerto, he went to Vienna to study with Bruno Seidlhofer, teacher of Friedrich Gulda. Seven years later he won the Dinu Lipatti Medal in London and first prize at the International Vianna da Motta Competition in Lisbon.

Since his international career began in 1959, Freire has appeared at virtually every important musical centre, in recital and working with countless distinguished conductors and orchestras.  A great musical collaborator, he has toured extensively with Martha Argerich, with whom he shares a long-time musical collaboration and friendship. They have recorded several discs together, including a live recital from the Salzburg Festival.

“This, Nelson Freire's first disc devoted to Bach, is predictably personal. It speaks of a long acquaintance with the works on offer and you only need to sample the Fourth Partita's Sarabande to hear how lovingly he caresses the music, giving it a raptness that rivals Perahia” (Gramophone)

. . . a superb overview of Bach's works played on the piano, from towering original works such as the Fourth Partita or the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, through to a selection of transcriptions. In lyrical mood, as in his version of Myra Hess's arrangement of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", Freire's Bach is soft, flowing and atmospheric; elsewhere, especially in the Chromatic Fantasy, his fingerwork is dazzlingly fast, accurate and pin-sharp in its attack. (Paul Drive, Classic FM)

Nelson Freire CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2 - Ballade No. 4 - Berceuse - Polonaise Héröique

Beautifully recorded, open, tangible and unprocessed, leading up to the Concerto Nelson Freire gives an unaffected recital of Chopin solos that embrace a spontaneous, beguiling and eloquent Impromptu, a Ballade that is at once direct yet elusive and most sensitively realised with a range of colours and dynamics, then a dreamy Berceuse followed by a trio of Mazurkas that are respectively earthy, teasing and mercurial -- the music's complexities unravelled without denuding inherent enigmas -- and to round things up a Polonaise that is noble and pulsating. With a detailed and alert accompaniment from Lionel Bringuier and the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne, Freire continues to demonstrate why he is one of the most discriminating pianists around, for this account of the F-minor Piano Concerto -- lively and malleable in the first movement, distinguished by strength, affection and old-world charm, then hauntingly expressive in the nocturne-like Larghetto, and finally dancing vivaciously -- is the epitome of innate Chopin-playing, completing a release that is a winner. (Colin Anderson, Classicalsource)