The great American pianist will release his latest album on the Yellow Label after more than four decades with Sony.

American pianist Murray Perahia, who will turn 70 next year, has left Sony to release his new album on Deutsche Grammophon. The landmark new partnership will be launched in October with a recording of Bach’s French Suites.

“I look forward to working with Deutsche Grammophon on projects that are dear to my heart,” said Perahia. “My exciting new relationship with Deutsche Grammophon means that I can share my interpretations with the widest global audience.”

Perahia intends to record key works from his repertoire, highlighting the insights he has gained over the course of his long career. “The recording process provides the chance to return to compositions – to uncover fresh ways of thinking and feeling about them – and to explore the masterworks of the keyboard repertoire at every stage in one’s development,” said Perahia. “There is something very special for me about revisiting music by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Brahms. Their inexhaustible art remains a constant source of inspiration to me.”

Perahia’s move follows a decades-long exclusive association with Sony Classical that began with its predecessor, Columbia Masterworks, in 1973. With Maurizio Pollini, Daniel Barenboim and Grigory Sokolov already on DG, the label now appears to have cornered the market where the piano’s elder statesmen are concerned.

“It is a great privilege to be working with Murray Perahia on recording projects that will certainly be recognised as landmark interpretations for many decades to come by connoisseurs and critics as well as by a broader audience,” said Deutsche Grammophon President, Dr Clemens Trautmann. “One of Murray’s great qualities – in life as well as in music – has been his desire to constantly challenge himself and never give up fighting for the optimal result. His music-making today is as fresh and compelling as it was at the outset of his unparalleled career, but now of course he can also draw on his comprehensive experience and life-long studies of every academic and pianistic aspect of the core repertoire. Murray will be a great source of inspiration to the entire Deutsche Grammophon community of artists and music lovers.”

Perahia has recorded Bach’s keyboard works extensively for Sony over the years, including the Concertos, the English Suites, the Partitas and, of course, the Goldberg Variations, so it is no surprise that he will begin this new stage in his career with Bach.

Discussing expresivity and Bach with Limelight’s Editor Clive Paget in 2013, Perahia said: “I think that Bach is very expresive. He wrote the St Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass, and they reach the deepest part of one’s soul. They’re religious. I mean, he’s very often talking about metaphysical and theological questions, but it’s always with the soul. Any aria of Bach not only touches the soul but comes from the soul, it’s deeply moving. It’s not a technical or mechanical exercise; I don’t think that at all”.

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