Award-winning pianist Ivana Gavric’s third album for Champs Hill Records is a very personal selection of repertoire including Grieg’s Piano Sonata, the Ballade and a selection of his Lyric pieces. There is also a unique epilogue - a new piece written for Ivana (the first of a set of four) by RPS Award-winning composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Named Gramophone’s ‘One to Watch’ and BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Rising Star’, Ivana has performed on the major concert platforms in the UK including The Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall and Royal Festival Hall, as well as across Europe, in Canada, Japan and Russia. Attracting considerable praise for her interpretations of Janácek’s music in particular, Ivana performed his Concertino and LH-concerto Capriccio with the RPS Award-winning Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon. Ivana has also recorded his piano works on her first two Champs Hill releases, “In The Mists” (CHRCD009) and “From The Street” (CHRCD026).

Grieg has formed an important part of Ivana’s repertoire since her childhood. His popular Lyric Piece ’Butterfly’ was one of the first pieces Ivana learnt while still living in Sarajevo, and the Piano Sonata one of the first pieces she performed in public upon arriving in the UK in 1992. As with her previous two albums of Janácek’s works, Ivana immersed herself completely in studying Grieg in preparation for the recording. She visited Norway especially to hear the Slåtter in their original setting, performed on the Hardangerfiddle by Norway’s leading fiddlers Knut Hamre and Frank Rolland. She also sought advice from the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. "Above all, what was most important for me was to see at first-hand the beautiful, sometimes formidable, landscape that Grieg drew so much inspiration from", Ivana says, "He is one of a few composers who somehow completely captures not only his native folk music in his oeuvre, but also the landscape, the fjords and the sheer sense of scale one feels in Norway."