Plaisanteries

Humor in music is the theme of this album by the 25-year-old pianist Hanna Bachmann from Austria, who plans debuts in the Berlin Philharmonic and concerts in the UK and US next season, and whom the conductor Kirill Petrenko attested "great musicality, creativity, high technical ability, fine sound and a matured personality". The spectrum of variety of this program spans from the childlike cheerfulness of Mozart (Variations on "A Woman is the Most Delightful Thing" K. 613) to the profound wit and deliberate irony of Beethoven ("Diabelli Variations" Op. 120) to the pungent laughter of Prokofiev ("Sarcasm" Op. 17).