Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos

Very much an artist of the twenty-first century, Ukranian-born Lisitsa secured a vast global audience purely through social media. She quickly became one of the most viewed pianists on YouTube with over fifty million million visitors to her videos.

Lisitsa made her Decca debut with Live at the Royal Albert Hall, released in July 2012 on CD and DVD. The live streaming of the recital attracted an incredible 100,000 views within a week.

Signed to Decca Classics in the spring of 2012, Lisitsa has recorded all four Rachmaninov piano concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody with the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Francis.

In October 2012, Piano Concerto No.2 was exclusively released as a digital EP, a release which met with considerable success.

This was followed by digital EP releases of the individual Concertos No.3, No.4 and Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini in subsequent months, prior to the release of the complete set.

Lisitsa describes the recording as arguably the most ambitious piano-orchestra project a pianist can undertake in a lifetime. The sheer variety of emotions and styles touched upon is encyclopaedic.