An album released on December 5th under the Deutsche Grammophon label: preludes by Chopin and Scriabin, with pianist Mihail Pletnev.

At the age of 68, Pletnev remains one of the legends of world pianism, something that can be discovered by listening to this album. It is his first disc for Deutsche Grammophon as a pianist in 20 years in his capacity as a recital pianist, his most recent appearance was on an album of Mozart sonatas, released in 2006.

The album was recorded in November 2024 in Berlin, a studio album that nevertheless preserves the freshness and inventiveness of a live recital.

I listened to this album with great pleasure and amazement, because I realized that the subtleties proposed by Mihail Pletnev are encountered extremely rarely today among other pianists who are currently highly rated. The way he treats the melodic line, with a naturalness and cantabile of an almost otherworldly refinement, is especially impressive in the case of Frédéric Chopin's 24 Preludes, Op. 28. The manner of constructing the sound planes which you can see being born right in front of you, following either the left hand or the right hand the good taste with which he brings to the foreground the famous Chopinian rubato, the broad palette of nuances, all of these contribute to an interpretation of the highest class, in which we feel the naturalness, the humanity and the fragility of the sensitivity of a great musician.

Mihail Pletnev is a musician who has not only made a great career as a pianist, but also as a conductor. In 1978, at the age of 21, Mihail Pletnev launched onto the orbit of international stars by winning the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In 1990, he founded the Russian National Orchestra, the first independent orchestra in Russia, an ensemble with which he carried out numerous tours and recordings. However, since 2022, Mihail Pletnev has not returned to Russia, he has spoken openly against Putin and the war launched by him against Ukraine. Thus, in 2022 he founded in Switzerland, the country of which he is currently a citizen, a new orchestra, the Rachmaninoff International Orchestra, made up of Russian, Ukrainian, and Western European musicians.

And thus we find Pletnev returning to his first love, the piano, on this album recorded in a four and a half hour session in Berlin, which marks a new premiere for Deutsche Grammophon as well, the first disc, after more than 40 years, recorded directly in a purely analog format for vinyl.

We have a special warmth of sound, which completes the artist's vision also from a technical point of view, born of the great Russian pianistic tradition, yet with a special personal touch, as we also observe in the interpretation of Aleksandr Scriabin's 24 Preludes, Op. 11. Perhaps it is not unimportant to note as well the intellectual stature of the musician, who speaks no fewer than 10 foreign languages.