This disc features the young Ukrainian pianist Alexander Romanovsky who first came to the attention of the musical world in by winning the Busoni International Piano competition in 2001 at 17 years of age. His Decca contract dates from 2007 and since then he has made four highly regarded recordings – a disc of Brahms and Schumann, a disc of Rachmaninov and one of Beethoven’s Diabelli variations. The current disc was recorded in 2012 and 2013 and maintains the impressive standards of the other three discs.
The coupling of the two sonatas is the ideal way to collect these works but surprisingly rare. Most pianists who have recorded the sonatas have usually recorded only one of the sonatas and that is more often than not the second one. The attendant confusion over the second sonata is that there are several versions available apart from the 1907 original and the revised 1931 version by the composer. In addition to those two there are hybrid versions combining music from both of the composer’s versions. The most known is that by Horowitz, approved by Rachmaninov, but other pianists bring