This disc confirms Nicholas Angelich's reputation as the greatest Brahms player of his generation. The pianist's previous recordings of music by the great German Romantic, collections of solo piano music, chamber music, and the First Piano Concerto, were all magnificent, and this recording of the Second Piano Concerto with Paavo Järvi leading the Frankfurt Radio Symphony plus the Klavierstücke, Op. 76, is at the same level.

Adored by the world’s greatest orchestras andconductors, Nicholas Angelich was the idealchamber music partner for countless artists. Butbeyond his unique career, he was outstanding for his quality of listening, his extreme attention toothers and his total benevolence. His passing leaves a huge void that his rich discography, his recorded concerts and his many interviews for various radio stations will help to fill. Mirare wanted to commemorate him by celebrating the 20th anniversary of this recording of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage.

In 2006, Nicholas Angelich released his first disc of Brahms' solo piano music: a coupling of the ballades, the rhapsodies, and the Paganini Variations. He followed that up in 2007 with a two-disc set containing Brahms' four sets of late piano music. Both releases were simply fabulous. Blazingly virtuosic, deeply expressive, and immensely powerful, these were Brahms' performances to treasure.

With ‘La Ronde’, Nicholas Angelich pays tribute to the relationships between three of Romanticism’s greatest composers for the piano. Schumann, Chopin and Liszt were born within 18 months of each other and knew each other personally. Schumann dedicated Kreisleriana to Chopin, who dedicated two of his Op.10 Etudes to Liszt, who, closing the circle, dedicated his B minor Piano Sonata to Schumann.

Nicholas Angelich’s new album is dedicated to Prokofiev, the so-called unclassifiable artist– considered revolutionary by some, neo-classical by others. Coming to public attention as a virtuoso pianist, Sergei Prokofiev left a fascinating body of work, that of a composer torn between two societies, between the culture of his homeland and the unchallenged culture of the West.

"Bach purifies me: he offers me a new view on life, never mind what he brings in purely pianistic terms," said U.S.-born and Paris-trained pianist Nicholas Angelich. None of this makes a great deal of sense; Bach of course brought nothing in purely pianistic terms, and purification isn't something his patrons and audiences would have much associated with his secular keyboard music. What you're getting here is old-school Romantic Bach, with pedals, crescendos, a whole palette of articulation and attack, and in general an episodic freedom in its approach to the notes on the page.