Portuguese virtuoso Artur Pizarro makes a welcome return to the Romantic Piano Concerto series with the outpourings of two brilliant pianist-composers. Their names may not be familiar to listeners today. The Brazilian Henrique Oswald and the Portuguese Alfredo Napoleão were born in the same year, less than three months apart, when Schumann, Brahms and Liszt were alive and Chopin recently deceased. Both were of mixed European heritage: Oswald with a Swiss-German father and Italian mother, Napoleão with an Italian father and Portuguese mother. Both were child prodigies who became widely travelled concert pianists, pedagogues and composers. In 1868 Oswald gave his ‘farewell recital’ and left Rio de Janeiro to study in Europe; Napoleão went to Brazil.

Odradek Records is delighted to present the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos performed by Artur Pizarro and the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal under the baton of Julia Jones. This is a recording not to be missed: Artur Pizarros interpretations are renowned internationally for their insight and nuance, and this album represents for Pizarro and his fellow musicians a very personal labour of love, especially when overcoming the obstacles of the pandemic in order to record together. The majesty, power and innovation of the Beethoven Piano Concertos is contrasted with a selection of solo pieces by Beethoven; Romances and Rondos that round off the release with irresistible intimacy. On this recording Artur Pizarro plays Bechstein grand pianos kindly provided by Bechstein. Artur Pizarro has recorded a series of highly-acclaimed albums with Odradek, including the complete Rachmaninov piano music, and Lebensreise, a disc of music by Robert Schumann, for which Pizarros playing was praised as: soft as velvet, but muscular and virtuoso if necessary technique and virtuosity are unconditionally at the service of the composers intentions (Klassiek Centraal). Pizarro also performed the Poulenc Piano Concerto with the Beethoven Philharmonie and Thomas Rsner on the album Couleurs, praised in Gramophone magazine: Pizarro seems delighted to meet the score on its own terms, turning in a performance of considerable sensitivity and subtlety.