Yellow Label releases box set of recording landmarks by piano virtuoso Maria Joao Pires

The Yellow Label, Deutsche Grammophon, has released a box set of 38 landmark albums by Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires.

Maria Joao Pires performing in Rio de Janeiro in 2009. Picture: Marcos D'Paula/AGENCIA ESTADO/AE

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The Yellow Label, Deutsche Grammophon, has released a box set of 38 landmark albums by Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires, spanning 22 years and including some of the finest recordings of the music of Chopin and Mozart anywhere in the catalogue.

Pires was one of the most poetic and adventurous virtuosos of her generation with a prodigious touch and technique, but unlike some others she was careful not to impose herself at the cost of the composer’s intentions.

“In approaching a piece of music as a performer, one can have a tendency to take hold of the piece and interpret it in his or her own way. Or, on the contrary, one can also not take hold of it at all and quite simply meet it as it is,” she says in the liner notes of this handsome box set.

She remains true to her word throughout this collection which covers the first three Mozart sonatas she recorded for DG right through to a charming and unusual farewell disc from 2011 which pairs Robert Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood with a selection of Fado songs with her compatriot, the singer Carlos do Carmo.

REVERED

As a soloist Pires gives us three of Beethoven’s sonatas, including the Moonlight, as well as the complete nocturnes, preludes and three concertos of Chopin – along with the Sonata for piano and cello and various waltzes and mazurkas – and a swag of Schubert and Schumann with a smattering of Brahms.

But it is as a Mozart specialist that she is most revered, and the listener is treated to arguably the finest survey of the complete piano sonatas, alongside seven of the 27 piano concertos, with standout orchestral performances conducted by Claudio Abbado and Frans Bruggen.

Pires was equally prolific as a chamber musician and her long personal and musical partnership with the dynamic French violinist Augustin Dumay is celebrated in magnificent recordings of the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and Grieg, along with a French album of Ravel, Debussy and Franck works. The Beethoven set, recorded soon after they met, sizzles with a chemistry that goes beyond the musical and the works fly off the page.

Album artwork for Deutsche Grammophon box set of Maria Joao Pires' complete recordings.

The duo are joined by Chinese-born cellist Jian Wang for trios by Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart, as well as Schumann’s piano quintet.

Pires was always happier in the studio than in the concert hall – in fact she retired from touring for several years in the 1980s to raise her children – and with the superb DG team of engineers and producers this care and freedom comes across strongly in all these recordings.

But up until her final retirement in 2017 she was a much-prized concert performer, sometimes filling in at short notice for her friend Martha Argerich, who is notorious for cancelling. Perhaps the best known – and impressive – story of Pires in concert was captured on video when the orchestra under Riccardo Chailly started playing the opening bars of a Mozart concerto. You can see the moment of panic when she realises that this is not the work she had prepared.

Needless to say her prodigious memory got her through for another performance to be treasured and remembered.

You can get the box set at Classicsdirect.com.au for $159.95.