Murray Perahia & Radu Lupu (piano)
Sony · 88697858112 · 59 minutes
There’s something almost miraculous about the way Perahia and Lupu share a single instrument without ever seeming to compete — the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos floats with a delicacy that feels entirely natural, while the Schubert Fantasie opens up into something vast and orchestral, almost operatic in its emotional sweep. These two pianists find a rhythmic trust between them that takes years to develop, and you can hear it in every phrase. It’s the kind of duo playing that makes you forget there are two separate people at two separate keyboards.
Awards:
- Gramophone Awards — 1986 — Winner – Instrumental
- Presto Greatest Recordings of the 1980s
“Wonderful performances: delicacy in the Mozart as well as a feel for the Sonata’s near-orchestral scale. A magisterial reading of Schubert’s Fantasie.”
— BBC Music Magazine, December 2011,5 out of 5 stars
Murray Perahia (piano)
Sony · SK64399 · 59 minutes
Chopin’s four ballades are strange, brooding things — each one a kind of compressed drama that starts somewhere ambiguous and ends in catastrophe, and Perahia navigates that emotional arc with an instinct that feels almost telepathic. There’s a suppleness to his phrasing here that never tips into sentimentality, keeping the music’s darker undertow always audible beneath the lyrical surface. Sony issued this back in 1995 and it has simply never been bettered — the Gramophone and Penguin Guide accolades aren’t hype, they’re just the record catching up with what listeners already knew.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — July 2026 — 100 Greatest Recordings
- Gramophone Awards — 1995 — Winner – Instrumental
- Penguin Guide — Rosette
“The Gramophone Good CD Guide awarded this its highest accolade, denoting "an unrivalled version, a cornerstone of the catalogue", adding that "this is surely the greatest, certainly the richest…”
— Gramophone Magazine, October 2007
Murray Perahia (piano)
Deutsche Grammophon · 4796565 · 91 minutes
Murray Perahia brings something genuinely rare to these six suites — a conversational quality that makes the two-voice dances feel like an intimate back-and-forth rather than a keyboard exercise. Bach wrote the French Suites without preludes, which means every movement has to earn its place immediately, and Perahia meets that challenge with a natural ease that never tips into blandness. The variety he finds within such stripped-down textures is the real story here, and it’s the kind of playing that makes 91 minutes disappear.
Awards:
- BBC Music Magazine — Disc of the month
- Gramophone Magazine — November 2016 — Disc of the Month
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2016
- Gramophone Awards — 2017 — Winner – Instrumental
“Perahia is unrivalled in coaxing a subtle dialogue in the dances that resort to the artful pared-back minimalism of the two-part invention. There’s nowhere to hide and Perahia’s effortless variety…”
— BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2016,5 out of 5 stars
Murray Perahia (piano)Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta
Sony · 88843062432 · 5 hours 21 minutes
Chopin’s piano writing lives in this strange world where technical demand and poetic intimacy are almost impossible to separate, and Perahia might be the ideal guide through that tension. His Études in particular have this quality of feeling completely inevitable — every phrase shaped with such clarity that the music seems to reveal itself rather than being performed. Add in Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic for the concertos and you’ve got over five hours of Chopin that rewards serious listening from start to finish.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — November 2014 — Re-issue of the Month
- Gramophone Awards — 2003 — Winner – Instrumental
- Gramophone Awards — 1995 — Winner – Instrumental
- Grammy Awards — 45th Awards (2002) — Best Classical Instrumental Solo Recording
“A self-recommending six-disc set…which includes the Gramophone Award-winning disc of the Etudes. As Bryce Morrison said of that disc: ‘From Perahia there is order and lucidity at the heart…”
— Gramophone Magazine, November 2014
Murray Perahia (piano)
Deutsche Grammophon · 4798353 · 55 minutes
Pairing the “Moonlight” with the “Hammerklavier” is a quietly audacious move — one is an intimate nocturnal poem, the other a colossal, almost terrifying statement of will, and Perahia holds both in the same steady, illuminated hands. His Scherzo in the Op. 106 crackles with precision that never tips into mechanical rigidity, and the finale’s fugal labyrinth gets navigated with a boldness that makes the whole thing feel inevitable rather than exhausting. At 55 minutes, this is a masterclass in making two completely different Beethovens feel like one deeply coherent conversation.
Awards:
- Presto Recording of the Week — 9th February 2018
- Gramophone Magazine — March 2018 — Recording of the Month
- BBC Music Magazine — May 2018 — Instrumental Choice
- Record Review — 10th March 2018 — Recording of the Week
“The pulse of the Scherzo is rigorously even, but it has explosive energy; the sheer precisions of the articulation in the finale is a pleasure, as he takes us boldly through its labyrinth of…”
— BBC Music Magazine, May 2018,5 out of 5 stars
Murray Perahia (piano)
Sony · SK62785 · 68 minutes
Handel and Scarlatti sit together on this disc in a way that feels completely natural — both composers obsessed with melody and surprise, both capable of wrong-footing you just when you think you’ve got them figured out. Perahia brings an almost vocal quality to the Handel suites, letting phrases breathe and sigh in ways that make you forget you’re listening to a modern concert grand rather than a harpsichord. The Scarlatti sonatas get that same tender intelligence, each one a tiny world unto itself, and Perahia never rushes through them like checkboxes — he plays them like he’s genuinely curious where each one is going.
Awards:
- Gramophone Awards — 1997 — Winner – Instrumental
Murray Perahia (piano)
Sony · 88697727252 · 78 minutes
Brahms packed so much into the Handel Variations — thirty variations and a massive fugue built on a modest Baroque theme — and the work rewards a pianist who understands counterpoint from the inside out. Perahia’s years spent inside Bach’s keyboard world clearly shape how he moves through this piece, giving even the fastest variations a sense of inevitability rather than flash. The fugue at the end lands with real weight, feeling earned rather than merely executed.
Awards:
- BBC Music Magazine — February 2011 — Disc of the month
- Gramophone Magazine — February 2011 — Editor’s Choice
- Gramophone Awards — 2011 — Winner – Instrumental
“His long experience with Bach’s keyboard works gives him a natural point of entry to the Variations on a Theme of Handel, which is taken at quite fast tempos…Yet Perahia never draws attention…”
— BBC Music Magazine, February 2011,5 out of 5 stars
