Classical Pianist

Classical Pianist

New solo piano album SOLACE has been released

Album features music of sorrow and solace from Sibelius’ “Valse Triste” and Brahms’ piano pieces all the way to Matthew Whittall’s 40-minute-long post-minimalist “Solace”, the first recording of which this is. Another first recording on this album is Whittall’s “Valse No. 7”, an elegant hommage to the piano style of French composer Erik Satie. Read more…

Liszt-Stradal: Symphonic Poems

Complete recording released

This release marks the end of a long journey through all 13 of Liszt’s symphonic poems, 12 of them arranged by his pupil August Stradal. The fourth volume includes the first and last numbered symphonic poems, Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne and Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe, the latter transcribed by Marin himself. Disc also includes six transcriptions of Liszt’s songs by Stradal. All first recordings!

News

Interview of Risto-Matti Marin in Pianist Magazine

Mar 11, 2021

Risto-Matti Marin's interview by Eric Schoones is going to be published in Pianistmagazine (Netherlands & Germany) in the March 2021 issue. Schoones is the editor-in-chief of Pianist as well as a pedagogue and pianist himself. Schoones has recently published the...

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A new project – Finnish Bach transcriptions

Mar 4, 2021

Concert transcriptions of Bach's music were hugely popular in the late 19th and early 20th Century. In his new project Marin will shed light on Finnish Bach transcriptions, made by Karl Ekman, Ilmari Hannikainen, Erkki Melartin and Taneli Kuusisto. Ekman and...

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Upcoming Events

musicweb-international.com

Risto-Matti Marin’s pianism has everything technically, but it is all used in the service of the music, in which he so wholeheartedly believes. His doctoral thesis focussed on piano transcription, but there is nothing dryly academic about his passionately red-blooded performances here. The piano sound copes with the wide dynamic range admirably, and the booklet has a dozen pages of enlightening notes (entirely in English). Roy Westbrook, www.musicweb-international.com
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Music Finland

It’s always exciting to encounter a recording with a selection of works by different composers, hand-picked by pianist Risto-Matti Marin. As a piano music lover I surely admire him as a piano virtuoso, but also as a researcher and a fearless cultural explorer, willing to look deep in the future as well as the past. […] Hidden Treasures is seemingly packed with romantic late-night thoughts and fairytale charm, mellow, haunted and serene melancholy. Marin’s playing is confident, insightful and...
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FMQ

Risto-Matti Marin’s recital of unknown Finnish Romantic piano music is a triumph. The works he has chosen all arouse surprised respect – who knew? – and he plays them with unhesitating conviction. Risto-Matti Marin’s performances – of music that is often fearsomely difficult – have a real swagger and confidence, and he has been given superb recorded sound. Martin Anderson, FMQ, 8.12.2019
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Music Finland

Piano virtuoso Risto-Matti Marin continues his series of brilliant solo piano recordings, this time with recent Finnish piano repertoire. The album contains only premiere recordings by composers Eero Hämeenniemi, Matthew Whittall, Juho Miettinen and Matei Gheorghiu. Beautiful pianism and interesting new contemporary works, which all lean towards different traditions in their own personal ways. If you find contemporary art music hard to approach, I highly recommend to give this album a try!...
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FMQ

Pianist Risto-Matti Marin has formed a meaningful musical whole out of five works, all recorded for the first time, by four contemporary composers living in Finland. Marin's interpretation of Hämeeniemi's Le Trastevere Variazioni, inspired by Frescobaldi, is delicate. His qualities as fearless virtuoso become most apparent in Juho Miettinen's (b. 1978) Piano Sonata No. 1 ("Sixth Sense, 2009/2014) and Matei Gheorghiu's (b. 1984) Piano Sonata No. 3 (2016) Anna Pulkkis, FMQ 5.12.2018
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BBC Music Magazine 2013

Sturdy Performances: Marin is very strong in Liszt's ultra-difficult Tannhäuser arrangement. Malcolm Hayes, BBC Music Magazine 2013
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musicweb-international.com

This disc has been programmed with great care, the more effusive transcriptions sandwiched between those of interior delight, such as Brassin’s delicately baroque Waldweben from Siegfried. Placing that alongside the dark cortège of Busoni’s Trauermarsch is equally inspired, for it highlights the composers’ different styles and how fluently Marin adapts to their varying demands. His control of touch and dynamics are most atmospherically demonstrated as the funeral procession dissolves into the...
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International Piano, 1–2/2013

"The very characteristic orchestral sonority of Wagner's music has been a challenge for piano transcribers over the years. Here is a fascinating set of transcriptions played by a Finnish pianist that starts off with a transcription by a fellow Finn. Jukka Nykänen (born 1976) takes Liszt as his starting point, with deep bass growls; the full scope of the piano is utilized, resulting in an orchestral-scale storm. Marin has technique to spare, and the recording is astonishing in its presence....
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cvnc.org

If you like and enjoy the Bach, Chopin, and Debussy Preludes, appreciate the similarities and differences among them, and admire the tradition of the form itself and enjoy hearing what different composers do with it, you will likely also enjoy and like all of these. Marvin J. Ward, http://cvnc.org 27.12.2012
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Fanfare

Stradal’s transcriptions are both scrupulously accurate and strutted in vaulting virtuoso demands to carry over, with the fullest possible effect, the symphonic grandeurs of the originals and put them in the hands of pianists equal to them. Risto-Matti Marin is such a pianist. One marvels at the stamina that can keep such a plethora of detail in place with such relentless élan; at his narrative shaping, which can turn up an already withering heat, so to speak, at climactic moments; at his...
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Risto-Matti Marin plays Wagner-Liszt’s Isoldes Liebestod in Helsinki (2019)

See more videos here