Piano music from Vienna – the composers who first come to mind will rarely be Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alban Berg, Christoph Ehrenfellner and Fritz Kreisler. The young Viennese pianist Maximilian Kromer, who can already be heard internationally on the biggest stages, deliberately leaves out Viennese Classicism with its somewhat well-trodden paths, and illuminates an even wider, refreshing spectrum of Viennese piano music with his debut album. While grand complexity and thorough chromatic explorations are imminent in the Piano Sonatas of Korngold’s and Berg’s, the New Viennese Dances by Ehrenfellner (composed in 2019) and the dances Liebesleid and Liebesfreud by Kreisler, transcribed by Rachmaninoff, combine the element of the Viennese waltz, which, like the so-called Second Viennese School, is part of the musical DNA of the performer’s hometown. © Gramola