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Pianist Anastasiya Bazhenova announces her debut album, From Mendelssohn to Madness, exploring how music reflects psychological shifts in the human condition when stability falters.

Bazhenova traces an inward journey through the music of Mendelssohn and Prokofiev, moving from certainty to uncertainty.

The journey begins with Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, representing an era where clarity and beauty served as fundamental ways of understanding reality and oneself. Yet, even in this apparent transparency, Mendelssohn hints at emerging instability, setting the stage for a deepening exploration.

In the Fantasia in F-sharp minor, Mendelssohn’s music becomes a field of resistance, depicting an inner struggle between the desire for wholeness and the forces that threaten to dismantle it.

As the narrative unfolds, the focus moves to Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata. Here, the music records reality in its most exposed form. In a world where the pace of change exceeds human grasp, Prokofiev’s work navigates extreme emotional states—including fear, fury, despair, irony, and paranoia.

For Bazhenova, this album is not merely a collection of distinct works, but a “single inner trajectory”. It serves as a musical narrative of a human being searching for meaning even when the old order no longer holds.

Track Listing:

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

• Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words, selections from Opp. 19, 38, 67, and 85)

• Fantasia in F-sharp minor, Op. 28

Sergej Prokofiev

• Piano Sonata No. 6 in A major, Op. 82

From Mendelssohn to Madness is released on CD and streaming on 1 April 2026 on the Etcetera label. Anastasiya performs in London at the 1901 Arts Club on Friday 24 April.

Pre-order From Mendelssohn to Madness

PRAISE FOR ANASTASIYA BAZHENOVA

“Superb musicianship and captivating stage presence.”

“A pianist capable of drawing an astonishing range of colour and depth from the instrument.“

“A highly sincere and intelligent musician with a unique artistic voice.”

(Comments from colleagues and audience)

Anastasiya Bazhenova is a concert pianist based in Norway, recognised for her intense musical concentration, refined sound palette, and a strongly individual artistic voice. She received her early training in Russia through the ten-year specialised programme for gifted children, a rigorous system known for producing pianists of exceptional technical and artistic discipline. This formative background continues to shape her uncompromising approach to sound, structure, and musical narrative.

Bazhenova later completed her advanced studies in Norway, earning a Master’s degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, where she is now based.

Her artistry is defined by a deep inner world and a strong sense of dramaturgy, with programmes conceived as coherent artistic statements rather than conventional recital formats. Her interpretations are often described as psychologically focused, emotionally charged, and marked by a distinctive clarity of musical thought.

She performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician across Europe and North America. Her debut album, From Mendelssohn to Madness, is released on Etcetera Records in 2026 and presents a sharply articulated artistic concept, positioning her as a distinctive voice on the contemporary piano scene.

anastasiyabazhenova.com

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Pianist Anastasiya Bazhenova explores the fragility of the human condition in her debut album

In her debut recording, pianist Anastasiya Bazhenova presents a programme that goes beyond a simple chronological survey of keyboard music. From Mendelssohn to Madness is not just about contrasting different historical periods; it is a deep exploration of the human condition and how our inner worlds change when external stability starts to fade.

For me, the tension is already present in the Mendelssohn. His music often sounds lyrical and balanced, but there is also something fragile in it, as if the stability could break at any moment. The Fantasia in F-sharp minor begins to open up that tension — it is more restless, more searching. And by the time we reach Prokofiev, the tension is no longer hidden. It becomes direct, physical, almost violent. So the “madness” in the title is not only the destination. It is something that slowly reveals itself along the journey.

Anastasiya Bazhenova (interview with Indie Boulevard magazine)

The album begins within the world of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, a composer whose music hails from an era where form offered a sense of reassurance. In his Songs Without Words, Bazhenova uncovers a serene human voice that communicates with the confidence that it can still be heard without exertion. During this period, qualities such as clarity, proportion, and beauty were not merely ornamental; they were fundamental tools for understanding both oneself and reality.

However, even within this transparent beauty, a subtle tension begins to emerge. In the Fantasia in F-sharp minor, this balance is no longer an automatic state but a conscious effort. Here, the music becomes a battleground where light and darkness clash, symbolising an inner struggle to preserve wholeness against forces that seek to dismantle it. For Mendelssohn, form serves as a final battleground against chaos.

The narrative takes a sudden turn with Sergej Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata, which opens the space beyond the rupture of the old order. This is music for a world that no longer promises stability—a world where the pace of change has quickened beyond our ability to comprehend.

Within this sonata, intense emotional states coexist in a raw, exposed form: fear, fury, despair, irony, and paranoia. The music forsakes the pursuit of traditional harmony, opting instead to record reality in its most unfiltered state. As the album moves from Mendelssohn to Prokofiev, the listener undergoes a inward shift: a transition from trusting in form to living without guarantees, and from viewing beauty as a support to acknowledging the need to live without it.

Rather than viewing these pieces as a collection of separate works, Bazhenova considers the programme as a single internal trajectory. The album does not seek to resolve the tensions it presents or provide simple explanations. Instead, it allows the music to unfold as a continuous process – a musical narrative of a human being who keeps feeling, thinking, and searching for meaning even when the structures of the past have broken down.

We often think of madness as something extreme or pathological, but in reality it is much closer to ordinary human experience. It can grow out of fear, obsession, loneliness, or simply from the unbearable tension between what we feel inside and what the world expects from us. In that sense, “madness” in this album is not something distant or theatrical. It is something that lives quietly inside many people. Music simply gives it a voice.

Anastasiya Bazhenova

From Mendelssohn to Madness is released on CD and streaming 1 April 2026 on the Etcetera Records label

Anastasiya Bazhenova performs in London at the 1901 Arts Club, a delightful salon-style concert venue, on 24th April. Details here https://www.1901artsclub.com/24-apr-2026-from-mendelssohn-to-madness.html

Anastasiya Bazhenova pianist

Photo credits Torgeir Rørvik

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London-based Chinese pianist Siqian Li announces her debut recording, Voyage among Fragments. Described as a ‘meditation on movement and memory’, the album serves as an artistic mosaic, gathering ‘shards of experience’ from Li’s life and career into a single, unified ‘language of sensitivity and refinement’.

The title reflects how my artistic identity has been shaped by many small but powerful moments rather than a single narrative. These “fragments” are memories, emotions, and cultural influences that have stayed with me – my Chinese roots, the elegance and sensitivity of French culture, and the free spirits and boldness I discovered during the years in America.

Siqian Li

Featuring transcriptions by virtuoso pianists such as Ignaz Friedmann and György Cziffra, the pieces ‘allow familiar voices to be rediscovered through the piano, inviting audiences to hear them with fresh intimacy and perspective’ (Siqian Li).

The repertoire charts Li’s development across three distinct cultural landscapes – China, France, and the United States – reflecting moments and encounters that have shaped her artistic identity.

Her native musical language is explored through Chu Wanghua’s Jasmine Flowers Fantasy, a piece that transforms a beloved Chinese folk melody into a timeless work, providing the pianist with a ‘profound sense of home’. Her years of study at the New England Conservatory in the USA are captured through the energy of the city and the spontaneity of jazz found in George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. This American experience also includes the ‘first spark of inspiration’ for the album: Maurice Ravel’s La valse. Performed in a transcription by her teacher, the Georgian pianist Alexander Korsantia, the work represents a turning point for Li, marking a period of ‘boldness and fearless expression’.

The French spirit is woven throughout the recording, particularly in Alexis Weissenberg’s evocative transcriptions of Charles Trenet’s songs. These pieces recall Li’s first major recital outside of China at the Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise, evoking memories of ‘floral Parisian streets’ and a ‘carefree spirit’. Other works, such as Dalayrac’s Romance and Cziffra’s arrangement of Vecsey’s Valse triste, explore bittersweet beauty and the sincerity of human connection.

The album’s voyage concludes in a state of serenity with Gounod’s Meditation on Bach’s Prelude in C Major. A prayer amidst the constant noise of our time, the final track invites the listener to ‘listen inward’ and find ‘truth in simplicity’.

Siqian Li regards this album as a personal reflection on her artistic life so far – a collection of ‘moments of courage, tenderness, discovery, and transformation’. As Li says: ‘May this music remind us all that beauty often lives in the most fleeting, delicate moments between what was and what is’.

Voyage Among Fragments is released in early March on the Sagitta Musica label, an independent record label, created by Siqian Li, devoted to artistic storytelling and the infinite horizons of emotion. Drawn by the inspiring arrow of sound, it is a space where stories unfold and music flows beyond – where classical roots meet imagination, sensitivity and freedom.

Siqian Li says,‘Through this debut, I wanted to highlight a pianistic personality rooted in curiosity, sensitivity, and emotional honesty. In curating the programme, I consciously moved away from a traditional idea of how a classical album should sound, allowing contrast, variety, and intuition to guide my choices. Rather than focusing on virtuosity for its own sake, my aim was to let imagination, colour, and inner listening shape the interpretation, placing freedom and vulnerability at the centre of musical communication.’

Find out more https://www.siqian-li.com/

Launch concert – Tuesday 10 March at Fidelio Cafe, London. Tickets/info

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Opus 109 – Vikingur Olafsson

A late masterpiece by Beethoven lies at the heart of this new release by Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson to create a dialogue across the centuries.

The works of Beethoven’s third creative period feel both intimate and cosmic. It is the music of the future, yet it is fuelled by the music of the past – the music of Bach.

Vikingur Olafsson

Olafsson eschews the usual custom of presenting Beethoven’s final three sonatas together and instead places the transcendent Opus 109 alongside pieces by J S Bach and Franz Schubert as well as Beethoven’s Sonata Ppus 90 to create a ‘concept album’ where pieces connect and reflect.

For Olafsson, it was Bach’s Goldberg Variations (which he recorded in 2023) that drew him to Beethoven’s last three sonatas. He “felt the presence” of Bach in these late masterpieces, works where Bach’s influence is most strongly felt in their “wild polyphony”. The Sonata Opus 90, meanwhile, offers a prelude to the Opus 109 with its intimate, fleeting first movement and warm second movement, while also looking forward to Schubert’s early period sonata in E minor, D566, also scored in two movements. The other works on the album are Bach’s prelude in E major from the Well-Tempered Clavier and the imposing E minor Partita, perhaps the greatest of his keyboard suites.

Another unifying thread through the album is that all the pieces are in the key of E (major and minor modes) which for Ólafsson, who has a form of synaesthesia, represents lush and vibrant shades of green.

The album opens with the Prelude No. 9 in E from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier, played with Olafsson’s trademark luminous tone. It’s an intimate opener and contrasts with the drama of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 27, the first movement of which is imposing yet carries with it, especially in the second movement, the same airy elegance of the Bach Prelude.

The E minor Partita is serious, majestic, articulated with clean Baroque detachment and sensitive voicing. Olafsson finds the same intimacy in the middle movements of the Partita, in particular in the Allemande, which is almost tender in its counterpoint. The Sarabande, prayer-like and sombre, has an improvisatory quality. The closing Gigue, meanwhile, is energetic and crisply articulated.

We stay with E minor in Schubert’s two-movement Sonata D566. Olfasson’s transparent sound and subtle phrasing suit Schubert and he brings a warm cantabile to the music, in particular in the second movement.

With his characteristic clarity, poetic imagination and instinct for colour, Ólafsson approaches Beethoven’s late-period masterwork as a living, breathing meditation – fragile, searching, ultimately transcendent. The opening movement is natural, almost spontaneous, with a conversational quality in its phrasing.

The middle movement bursts forth with a controlled ferocity. Here, Ólafsson’s articulation is exceptionally clean, almost crystalline, but never merely virtuosic.

The emotional heart of this sonata is the third movement, with its tender, prayerful theme. Each variation has its own emotional landscape, shaped with meticulous attention to detail and rich in genuine feeling, yet Olafsson never loses sight of the overall narrative arc of this movement. His voicing allows inner lines to glow while the delicate filigree in the upper registers shimmers delicately. The music seems to unfold in a single, unbroken breath, time almost suspended in the later variations. Here is the music’s spiritual core and Olfasson invites us to bask in its radiance.

The album closes with the Sarabande from the E major French Suite, as Olafssons takes us back to the beginning, as it were, with J S Bach, the daddy of them all.

As with his previous releases, notably his recordings ‘Rameau and Debussy’ and ‘From Afar’, Olfasson brings a fresh perspective to well-known repertoire through thoughtful programming, finding intriguing connections and shining a new light on the familiar. And it’s all beautifully presented too.

Opus 109 is released on Deutsche Grammophon on CD and streaming