Cristina Ortiz: Piano Recital

As a pianist, Cristina Ortiz has always identified passionately with the great European Romantic tradition – while keeping one foot firmly planted in the fertile musical soil of her native Brazil. This recital, recorded live in Munich's Carl-Orff Saal during the 1997 Munich Klaviersommer finds her at the height of her international career, in a programme of miniatures – ranging from Mompou to Brahms – that could almost serve as a musical self-portrait of a pianist who was praised by Gramophone magazine for her "sensitivity and imagination". Naturally, Villa-Lobos features; but so too does Debussy, Albéniz and Mendelssohn, composers for whom Ortiz feels a very special affinity.