Described as a “poet amongst pianists”, the renowned Portuguese artist Artur Pizarro makes his debut for Odradek Records with the first of three 2-CD sets presenting the complete solo piano works of Sergei Rachmaninov.

A former winner of the Leeds Piano Competition, which brought him to international acclaim in 1990, Pizarro offers his listeners a lifetime of love for, and experience with, this music which speaks, as he says, “of the endless variety of the human condition”.

Tracing Rachmaninov's development as a composer from the early Nocturnes and his encounters with Tchaikovsky as a teenage student of Nikolai Zverev in the 1880s, to the so-called ‘Corelli Variations’ of the 1930s, this landmark release shines a new light on every aspect of this remarkable oeuvre.

“The sheer inventiveness and beauty of the music is really amazing”, Artur Pizarro told Pianist magazine. “The rhythmic and harmonic language is so rich, and very few composers wrote so well for the piano.”

On this first volume, from the monumental passion of the Piano Sonata No.2, via the Études-tableaux, Op.39, to the tender lyricism of many of the lesser-known miniatures, Pizarro imbues every page of this music with the fire and feeling for melodic contour for which his playing has become so admired.