Studio Masters

Alice Sara Ott – Pictures (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:28 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Alice Sara Ott’s 2013 CD of keyboard works by Modest Mussorgsky and Franz Schubert was part of a recital she gave at St. Petersburg’s White Nights festival, recorded on July 3, 2012, in the Mariinsky Theatre. This album was the result of discussions between Ott and Deutsche Grammophon to release a disc of solo repertoire, and recording her live presented an appealing opportunity to add the ever-popular Pictures at an Exhibition to her discography. If the atmosphere of the occasion can be detected in Ott’s expressions, it is perhaps most noticeable in subtle nuances, rather than in the bigger gestures. For all of the piece’s grandeur and weight, Ott seems to shine most in the quieter sections, and her delicate playing takes on a poetic quality that is lacking in the loud, clangorous passages, which are all vigor and bravado. On this disc (though not in the order of the recital), Pictures is followed by Schubert’s Sonata in D major, D. 850, which balances the program with its length and gravitas, though its moods are more enigmatic and elusive. Ott’s controlled handling of the Con moto and Finale is admirable, though her playing in the first movement and the Scherzo is fairly aggressive and hard-edged. Ott’s many fans will want this CD for the energy and fire she displays, though newcomers may want to hear her studio albums to get a clearer impression of her abilities.
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Alice Sara Ott – Nightfall (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:09 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

The German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott is one of several young artists trying to break out from the pack of young recitalists, with creatively enjoyable results for listeners. She cultivates a high-fashion look and, still unusually in the concert music realm, uses videos to promote her music. Here she takes a venerable theme, that of the musical nocturne, and tries to bring fresh approaches to some familiar works. Partly it’s that some of the music isn’t conventionally thought of as “night music”; the Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies of Satie don’t specifically refer to nightfall, and despite its title, Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit is no nocturne. Except that, in Ott’s hands, it is. Nightfall for her is not a mere atmospheric mood but a moment of deep introspection, and many of her interpretations run counter to type or seem to raise psychological issues. Sample the technically perilous Scarbo movement from Gaspard de la nuit, which is generally a test of pianistic muscle. Ott, in her own trenchant notes, tells you that Scarbo is instead “a gnome who attacks artists in the night and drinks their blood, [and] confronts us with our fear of failure.” It’s a novel idea but perhaps one not so removed from Ravel’s own conception of the work, despite his stated intention of simply outdoing Balakirev’s Islamey in terms of sheer virtuosity. Her Debussy is likewise unsettled, with shifts between light and shade that are not smoothed out. A highly recommended outing from a promising rising star.
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Alice Sara Ott – Echoes Of Life (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:45 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

For her tenth Deutsche Grammophon release, pianist Alice Sara Ott returns to the music of Frédéric Chopin. She approaches Chopin’s 24 Préludes op. 28 from a fresh perspective, finding a personal thread that parallels the music’s dramatic arc and wide-ranging moods. The pianist frames the Préludes within a contemporary context by interspersing them with seven works by 20th- and 21st-century composers.
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Alice Sara Ott – Chopin: Complete Waltzes (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:22 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott is a performer who appears to care more about the score and the composer than about her image and interpretations. After promoting Lang-Lang, a pianist of maximal technique but debatable taste, DG has given Ott an exclusive recording contract, and her first release, the complete waltzes of Chopin, shows her to be a pianist of taste and restraint. That is not to say that her performances here are ever less than dazzling, because she plays with supreme ease, or any less than affecting, because she brings out everything in the scores, from sparkling wit to darkest melancholy. But Ott is not interested in demonstrating her technique or in grandstanding her interpretations. Everything here is in the score: the tender countermelodies, the long legato phrasing, the exquisite harmonic balances, and the lilting rubato. It sounds fresh and natural because Ott herself seems fresh and natural, and apparently not at all a showoff. Though by no means the greatest performances of the waltzes ever recorded — Dinu Lipatti’s EMI recording is now and likely always will be the most beautiful, the most masterful, and the most moving version of these works — Ott’s recording is well worth hearing by anyone who loves the music. The sound of DG’s digital recording is limpid.

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