Following the success of the 1st Chopin Festival Hamburg 2018 (available on Naxos 8.574058), the 2nd Chopin Festival Hamburg 2019 continues its unique approach of inviting pianists to perform on original historic instruments and, by way of comparison, on a modern grand piano in the same concert. Performances range from Chopin heard on his Pleyel ‘pianino’ of 1832 to the most technically advanced Shigeru Kawai grand piano built in 2019. Listeners are invited to discover ‘old’ and ‘new’ in completely fresh ways through these multifaceted interpretations. Pianist Tobias Koch has always been fascinated by the expressive potential of period keyboard instruments, playing these in unorthodox and spirited performances, ‘with disarming spontaneity’, as a large German weekly put it. He has long been considered one of the leading interpreters in the field of Romantic performance practice, the German Radio MDR Figaro writing: ‘Koch’s playing conjures up images that appear just as quickly as they fade away. Koch’s playing is infectious, every moment is an adventure.’ Hélène Tysman has recorded Chopin for the Oehms Classics label, her playing summed up as ‘Brillant!’ (RTL), ‘Dazzling!’ (BBC Music Magazine), and ‘A pianistic cosmos’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Janusz Olejniczak is a pianist, pedagogue and occasional actor who won the Fryderyk Chopin International Competition in Warsaw (1970) and the A. Caselli Competition in Naples (1974). Tomasz Ritter won the 9th Arthur Rubinstein Memorial International Young Pianist Competition in Bydgoszcz in 2011. In September 2018, he received the Main Award at the 1st International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments in Warsaw.