Romantic Piano - Elegant 88-Key Digital Piano for Home & Studio | Perfect for Beginners, Professionals & Live Performances | Ideal for Weddings, Concerts & Relaxation

This set is the single most wonderful survey of romantic piano music in existence. But you have to understand what the word "romantic" means - it is by no means self-evident, and downright wrong in the way we tend mostly to use it. Romanticism refers primarily to poetry - e.g. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, Novalis - and to music written in a "poetic" spirit. It refers also to a new sense of the beauty of nature that came in the wake of the first signs of the industrial revolution. It means an inward turn, a search for truth not in the technological, but the spiritual world. Above all, its concerns were with love, the rediscovery of chivalry. This is mirrored in the mostly small works of the 30-odd years that began the 19th century. Wagner is already decidedly post-Romantic in this sense. The epic scale of medievalism that took hold then denoted a turn to something quite different.Mendelssohn's Songs without Words are genuine expressions of this romanticism. We must not insist on seeking great depths in everything those composers wrote. They are salon pieces, like so many of the poems of that age. (Indeed Chopin escaped being a salon composer only on the strength of towering genius.) The way Barenboim plays these formerly over-popular pieces is with great affection, an impeccable stylishness, and a truly magical touch. This extends indeed to all the works of this album, and I will single out next the Liszt pieces (the Paraphrases, Notturne, Consolations) as rarely accorded such care. Barenboim's reticence and eschewal of bombast make all these miniatures appeared in jewelled fineness.There is hardly a weak moment in this whole set: remarkable!On the other hand, there are highlights of great merit in those works where Barenboim would expect to meet with stiff competition. The Chopin Nocturnes and the Liszt Sonata and Années de Pelerinage (which include the Dante Sonata).These are in my estimate among the greatest performance committed to recorded sound. The Chopin Nocturnes will undoubtedly strike some listeners as "cool", yet when you recall the effect Rubinstein had on performances of these pieces, your judgement might be mitigated. Exaggeration and overblown sentiment is precisely what these works are vulnerable to; and too many pianists indulge themselves in this way. Rubinstein showed that reticence is the better part of valour here, and Barenboim follows this hint with meticulous pianism and perfect equipoise. The three Liszt Sonetti have never been played as beautifully and passionately by any other pianist - this is miles ahead of such rivals as Berman or Brendel. The Dante Sonata, so easily vulgarised, is here treated like a great work of art. Finally, the great Sonata itself finds with Barenboim an interpreter who is serious about his art and gives us a reading full of grandeur and pianistic volcanism, without ever sliding into bombast or vainglory. I know of only two other recordings of the Sonata that can hold a candle to this one: Gilels on RCA (quite dated sound of course) and more recently Demidenko on Hyperion Nikolai Demidenko Plays Liszt. These are the men among Liszt players, compared to the all-too-frequent exhibitionists of mere technique, empty bravura.If this is music of interest to you, don't look anywhere else. This is the richest bouquet of Romanticism you are ever likely to encounter, and rarely played so masterly, so lovingly, so impeccably.The tone of the piano of a quality to match.