Balasz Szokolay - Edvard Grieg - Lyric Pieces (1990)

The Hungarian pianist Balázs Szokolay was born in Budapest in 1961, the son of a mother whois a pianist and a father who is a composer and professor at the Ferenc Liszt Academy. He started learning the piano when he was five and in 1970 entered the preparatory class of the Budapest Music Academy, where he completed his studies with Pál Kadosa and Zoltán Kocsis in 1983. He later spent two years at the Academy of Music in Munich, with a German government scholarship.
Balázs Szokolay made an early international appearance with Peter Nagy at the Salzburg Interforum in 1979, and in 1983 substituted for Nikita Magaloff in Belgrade in a performance of the Piano Concerto No.1 of Brahms. He is now a soloist with the Hungarian State Orchestra and has given concerts in a number of countries abroad, including Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Poland, the former Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Czecho-Slovakia. In September, 1987, he made his recital debut at the Royal Festival Hall in London. He has won a number ofimportant prizes at home and abroad, including, most recently, success in the 1987 Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians Competition. He took fourth place in the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1990, when his playing was particularly commended in the British press for its energy and imagination.

This is a very pleasing assortment from among Grieg's 66 short Lyric Pieces, written between 1866-1891. There were 6-8 pieces in each of the 10 "books", and this collection of 30 pieces contains selections from 9 of the books (there is no selection from Book 62 for some reason). Each and every one presented here is a pure delight, and represent Grieg's life-long desire to create a true Norwegian music genre derived from the folk music, dances, stories and natural environment of Norway. Every piece is evocative and the entire disc is delightful, thanks to the colorful and imaginative piano of Balazs Szokolay.
These pieces were recorded in 1989 at the Italian Institute in Budapest, and first released in Germany in 1990 as Naxos Catalogue number 8.550450. The UPC number of this first Naxos-Germany edition was 4891030504509. The DDD recording quality was excellent and stands the test of time.