Silverman's newest Chopin album named Stereophile's Best Of The Month

Robert's newest recording "Chopin's Last Waltz" has been named Stereophile Magazine's *Best of the Month* album for February, 2018. As Music Editor Robert Baird wrote in his review:

Silverman's Chopin is an unqualified success. Although every composition presented here is a familiar selection from Chopin's oeuvre, Silverman's conceptions of them delve deeply into the composer's inherent passions for his music and his love of melody. The overall architecture of Silverman's playing is solid and sure. Taken at slow tempos, the well-known Fantasie in f, Op.49, particularly its placid Adagio, benefits from Silverman's deft, lingering touch. Perfectly projected, his statements are captured in ravishing, exquisitely balanced Direct Stream Digital (DSD) sound.

In a call from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia, Silverman explained why he decided to record Chopin this late in his career, and how he formulated his approach to the work of this troubled icon of the Romantic era: "I did not start off with any preconceived notions. I wanted to see where a deep and profound study, as well as my musicality such as it is as I approach my 80th birthday would take me. I thought, What if you just forget all these little Chopin-esque formulas that everybody automatically puts into their playing including me, to a certain extent and really study it as seriously as I studied Beethoven?

So many people think of Chopin as a tunesmith, but he was as serious and as talented a composer as anybody, with a sense of counterpoint that's different than Bach, but better than anyone since Bach and I include Beethoven in that, frankly. And he was an original thinker. He had a language that really was his own, and it probably did develop out of the way he played the piano. In some of the great pieces, Like the [Ballade 4, Op.52], or the Polonaise-Fantaisie [in A-flat, Op.61], he really did invent a different way of composing fairly large-scale pieces. I wish he was a nicer man, but I'm in awe."

Beethoven Sonatas revisited.

Finally: Silverman's Long Awaited Schumann-Brahms recording

With what's going on in the shrinking CD world, this album of the Schumann Symphonic Etudes and the Brahms-Handel Variations could well be Silverman's final recording as a physical item. If so, it is a swan song: great engineering / editing by John Atkinson, Erick Lichte and Don Harder, a painting / cover design by David Lemon that perfectly captures the differences and similarities between Brahms and Schumann. [Silverman adds: "Hell, I even think my playing represents me at one of my finer moments."]

Silverman appointed to the Order of Canada - July 1, 2013

Silverman's complete Beethoven Sonatas recordings again available

A completely re-mastered recording of the 32 Sonatas of Beethoven are now coming available for download on iTunes, Amazon, and CD Baby. Album by album for only $10 or less, or most of the tracks for a buck. At the time for writing, Vol. 1 (Pathetique and Waldstein, plus Op. 101) is up, with others to follow very soon.

The first appearance of these recordings since both pressings of the CDs sold out completely shortly after they were issued. The raves were many, but Fanfare Magazine said it all in a lengthy, in depth review: "These performances are totally musical; that is, the music is first, not the playing of the music. He plays them naturally, as if he has lived with them all his life. He has found the essential humanity—the tragedy, the humor, and the triumph—of these works, and revealed it to us with a sense of gratitude. Silverman plays these masterpieces as musically as anyone I have ever heard. I recommend these as highly as possible."

The original CDs were masterfully recorded by Stereophile editor John Atkinson, and accurately reflected what the microphones "heard" in the spacious Santa Monica living room.  Silverman says "The recordings now have more oomph, and as far as I recollect, are a more accurate reflection of what I heard while seated at the piano."