Recital (transcriptions)

Hybrid/SACD - playable on all compact disc players.

This CD invites you to discover the transcribing works of Bach which inspired Mario Feninger ( Siciliano BWV 1031), Dame Myra Hess ( Adagio from the Toccata for Organ BWV 564) and Alexander Il'yich Ziloti ( Prelude BWV 855a). It also includes the transcriptions by Theodor Szántó ( Prelude and Fugue BWV 542), Camille Saint-Saëns ( Largo from the Sonata no. 3 BWV 1005), Wilhelm Kempff ("Awake! the voice is calling to us!” BWV 645) and by Serge Rachmaninoff and Ignaz Friedman each producing his own new-minted version of the Gavotte en Rondeau BWV 1006. Cyprien Katsaris here offers us among other things Bach's four-part close harmony versions of the melodies by Johann Schop and Philipp Nicolai. He also provides us with arrangements of his own, namely those of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 and of the Badinerie BWV 1067.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Cyprien Katsaris, the French-Cypriot pianist and composer, was born on May 5 th 1951 in Marseilles . He first began to play the piano at the age of four, in Cameroon where he spent his childhood. His first teacher was Marie-Gabrielle Louwerse.

A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire where he studied piano with Aline van Barentzen and Monique de la Bruchollerie (piano First Prize, 1969), as well as chamber music with René Leroy and Jean Hubeau (First Prize, 1970), he won the International Young Interpreters Rostrum-Unesco (Bratislava 1977), the First Prize in the International Cziffra Competition (Versailles 1974) and he was the only western-European prize-winner at the 1972 Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Competition. He was also awarded the Albert Roussel Foundation Prize (Paris 1970) and the Alex de Vries Foundation Prize ( Antwerp 1972).

He gave his first public concert in Paris , at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on May 8 th 1966 , as a "Knight” of the youth competition "The Kingdom of Music”; he performed the Hungarian Fantasy by Franz Liszt, with the Orchestre Symphonique d'Ile-de-France conducted by René-Pierre Chouteau.