Steinway & Sons presents the first album in a series of compilations that highlight piano music from the Steinway catalog.

 Serenity on a Steinway is a meditative listening experience filled with selections of serene beauty to soothe the spirit.   

ALBUM CREDITS

Serenity on a Steinway • STNS 30180

Release Date: 05/07/2021

Producer: Jon Feidner

Engineer: Lauren Sclafani

Production Assistant: Renée Oakford

Art Direction: Jackie Fugere

About the Artists

Gábor Farkas's uplifting performances have enchanted audiences throughout Europe and the world. He holds an MA and DLA degree in piano performance and teaching from Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, Budapest. In January 2011, Farkas was the soloist in the Official Opening Concert of the Liszt Year 2011, Zoltán Kocsis conducted the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the Palace of Arts, Budapest and he was also the soloist of the Closing Concert of the Chopin Year, in 2010 with the Sinfonia Varsovia. Farkas has worked with such internationally known conductors as Zoltán Kocsis, Ádám Fischer , Tamás Vásáry, Olli Mustonen, Philippe Bender and George Tchitchinadze.

Alan Feinberg is a unique and versatile pianist, as comfortable with Brahms as with Cage. He has given over 200 premieres, including Mel Powell's Pulitzer Prize-winning work Duplicates, and numerous works by such composers as John Adams, Milton Babbitt, John Harbison, Steve Reich, and Charles Wuorinen. In addition to frequent collaborations with the London Philharmonia and the BBC Scottish Symphony, he has been featured at major international festivals, such as the BBC Musica Nova Festival, and the festivals of Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, Geneva, Berlin, Brescia, Bergamo, and Budapest. In 1997, Feinberg won his third Grammy Award nomination for his recording of Morton Feldman's Palais de Marie and Charles Wuorinen's Capriccio, Bagatelle, and Sonata No. 3.

Katherine Jacobson Fleisher’s international performing career as a soloist, duo pianist and chamber musician has received critical acclaim. Leading orchestras with which she has performed include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra of Portugal, and the Orchestre National d’Ile de France. Emphasizing the importance of the music of our own time, she has commissioned works by contemporary women composers such as Dina Koston and Luna Pearl Woolf, and has performed chamber music of Dina Koston in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall.

Zhenni Li has garnered worldwide recognition as a winner of the 2017 New York Concert Artists Worldwide Debut Audition, Astral Artist’s 2016 National Auditions, the Grieg International Competition in Norway, and the unanimous 1st Prize at the Concours Musical de France. She is also a top prizewinner of the International Russian Piano Competition, Midwest International Piano Competition, the Kosciusko Chopin Piano Competition and The Heida Hermanns International Piano Competition. Li is on Piano Faculty/Chamber music coach for McGill School of Music for undergraduate students and is also the co-founder and Artistic Director for “The Last Soirée”, a multi-genre performing arts series which debuted in New York in spring 2018.

Moira Lo Bianco’s approach to music combines classical piano with improvisation. Her study of classical piano inspired a passion for J.S. Bach and Béla Bartók, who have both greatly influenced her, and she completed her Bachelor of Arts with an ethnomusicology thesis on Calabrian folk music and its traditions. Lo Bianco has performed in prominent venues and festivals across the United States and Italy, and collaborated with many noteworthy musicians including oud and violin virtuoso Simon Shaheen, Global Jazz Institute director Marco Pignataro, and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh of the Silk Road Ensemble. She was nominated for Jazz Artist of the Year at the 2013 Boston Music Awards.

Klara Min has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in her native country of South Korea, in some of the world’s most important concert venues including Carnegie Hall, Munich’s Gasteig, the Berlin Philharmonie, Berlin’s Konzerthhaus, Laeiszhalle, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, and Paris’s Salle Cortot. She has performed with prestigious orchestras such as Munich Kammerphilharmonie, Seoul Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra. Min was the recipient of a Samsung scholarship and is the founder and artistic director of New York Concert Artists and Associates (NYCA).

Nikita Mndoyants has toured in Asia, Europe, Russia, and the U.S. and appeared in major concert halls in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris, and Seoul. He has worked with renowned conductors including Bramwell Tovey, Leonard Slatkin, Eri Klas, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Charles Ansbacher, and Alexander Sladkovsky, and performed with the Svetlanov State Academic Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Mndoyants won first prize at the 2016 Cleveland International Piano Competition, first prize at the 2007 Paderewsky International Piano Competition, and was a finalist at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Vanessa Perez is a product of the same energized musical culture in Venezuela that produced such international stars as conductor Gustavo Dudamel and pianist Gabriela Montero. Praised for a bold, passionate performing style allied to musicianship of keen sensitivity, Perez has been championed by iconic performers. Perez has developed an international profile, playing prestigious venues across the Americas and Europe. She has performed not only with fellow Venezuelans Dudamel and Montero, but also with such top musicians as pianist Ingrid Fliter, cellist Jan Vogler, violinist Colin Jacobsen and conductors such as John Axelrod, Enrique Batiz, Gustav Meier, James Judd, David Gimenez Carreras, and Diego Matheuz.

Antonio Pompa-Baldi  won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 1999, and embarked on a career that continues to extend across five continents. A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long Competition in Paris, France, he also won a silver medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Pompa-Baldi appears regularly at the world’s major concert venues. His extensive recording catalogue features over 30 CDs and is constantly growing. Pompa-Baldi is on the piano faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music, and serves regularly on the juries of major piano competitions such as Cleveland, Grieg (Bergen), Minneapolis, Hilton Head, San Jose, Lang Lang (Shenzhen), and BNDES Rio de Janeiro.

Andrew Rangell is recognized as among the most eloquent and insightful interpreters of the major keyboard works of Bach and Beethoven. He is also acclaimed for a wide variety of recordings, which range from the music of Sweelinck, Farnaby, and Gibbons to Nielsen, Ives, Enescu, Bartók. In the 1980s Rangell gained national attention – and the award of an Avery Fisher Career Grant – for his vivid traversals of the complete Beethoven sonata-cycle in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Rochester, Denver, and other U.S. Cities. In recent years he has created several DVDs for children — integrating his special talents as author, illustrator, narrator, and pianist.

Sergey Schepkin is known as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of keyboard works by Johann Sebastian Bach. Schepkin made his Carnegie Hall début in 1993 at Weill Recital Hall, and has performed to great acclaim for the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center, Celebrity Series of Boston, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, the Maestro Chamber Series in Los Angeles, the Philharmonic halls in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo, among many other places. Schepkin is a recipient of numerous awards and grants, and a prizewinner in several international competitions. 

Passionate, inspired performances and brilliant technique are the hallmark of ChangYong Shin, First Prize winner of the 2018 Gina Bachauer International Artist Piano Competition, 2018 Rencontre Internationale des Pianistes "Prix Zygmunt Zaleski" in Paris, 2017 Seoul International Piano Competition and 2016 Hilton Head International Piano Competition. With performances in South Korea, Italy, France, the UK, across the United States and a growing reputation for compelling interpretations, Mr. Shin is developing an international career as a soloist and chamber musician.

About Steinway & Sons label

The STEINWAY & SONS music label produces exceptional albums of solo piano music across all genres. The label — a division of STEINWAY & SONS, maker of the world’s finest pianos — is a perfect vessel for producing the finest quality recordings by some of the most talented pianists in the world.