On 3 November 2026, pianist Nareh Arghamanyan releases Strauss Transformed: eleven ‘conversations’ between Johann Strauss II and pianist-composers who reworked his music for the concert stage, with Hänssler Classic. The album is available in stereo and Dolby Atmos (HC25017).
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Johann Strauss’s waltzes and theatre music provided material to the golden age of pianism to create a remarkable body of solo piano paraphrases. Pianists such as Alfred Grünfeld, Leopold Godowsky, Moriz Rosenthal, Ignaz Friedman, Ernst von Dohnányi, Carl Tausig, Eduard Schütt and Otto Schulhof built on original themes from Strauss II, reshaping them into their own language.
The album places these works side by side as individual responses to Strauss. The idea explores a period in which the distinction between pianist, interpreter and composer was less rigid than today.
Nareh Arghamanyan recorded the project in Vienna on a 280VC at the Bösendorfer Klaviermanufaktur. The choice of instrument and location was deliberate. The intention was to revive the intimate acoustic relationship between pianist, instrument and room of a Viennese salons around 1890.
The immersive recording in Dolby Atmos is intentionally restrained. The purpose is not to enlarge the piano artificially or to create obvious surround effects, but to preserve the natural position of the instrument while making more of the acoustic environment audible: resonance, reflections, decay and the sense of air around the piano. The recording aims to capture the Bösendorfer as naturally as possible, to retain the intimacy of the Klaviermanufaktur and to allow the immersive technology to serve the music and its interpretation.
The album places these works side by side as individual responses to Strauss. The idea explores a period in which the distinction between pianist, interpreter and composer was less rigid than today.
Nareh Arghamanyan recorded the project in Vienna on a 280VC at the Bösendorfer Klaviermanufaktur. The choice of instrument and location was deliberate. The intention was to revive the intimate acoustic relationship between pianist, instrument and room of a Viennese salons around 1890.
The immersive recording in Dolby Atmos is intentionally restrained. The purpose is not to enlarge the piano artificially or to create obvious surround effects, but to preserve the natural position of the instrument while making more of the acoustic environment audible: resonance, reflections, decay and the sense of air around the piano. The recording aims to capture the Bösendorfer as naturally as possible, to retain the intimacy of the Klaviermanufaktur and to allow the immersive technology to serve the music and its interpretation.
Nareh Arghamanyan is a Vienna-based pianist and Bösendorfer Artist: her career has combined a substantial international concerto and recital profile with an increasing emphasis on independently conceived recording and programming projects. She came to international attention in 2008 when she won First Prize at the International Piano Competition of Montreal, becoming the youngest winner in the competition’s history. Since then, she has appeared widely in Europe and North America as a recitalist and orchestral soloist.
Orchestral engagements have included Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. Conductors with whom she has worked include Riccardo Chailly, Kent Nagano, Sir Neville Marriner, Alain Altinoglu, Carl St. Clair and Michael Sanderling. Recital and festival appearances have taken her to venues including the Vienna Musikverein, Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Leipzig Gewandhaus and Lincoln Center, as well as festivals such as Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Bregenz, Colmar, Lanaudière, Tanglewood and Marlboro.
Nareh Arghamanyan’s recorded catalogue spans solo and concerto repertoire and has appeared on Pentatone, Sony Classical, Ulysses Arts and Hänssler Classic. Her Pentatone recordings include Rachmaninoff solo repertoire and concerto recordings of Liszt, Prokofiev and Khachaturian, including collaborations with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Alain Altinoğlu.
While the earlier part of her career established her principally through major concerto and virtuoso repertoire, her more recent work has increasingly centred on the construction of thematically coherent recital and recording projects: Femmes de Légende, devoted to piano music by women composers across three centuries; Frühlingsrauschen, exploring representations of spring in Romantic piano music; Strauss Transformed, 11 conversations between Johann Strauss II and pianists of the golden age.
Femmes de Légende received a nomination for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and Nareh subsequently was nominated for OPUS KLASSIK 2026 – Instrumentalist of the Year.
The Pianist-Creator Tradition
Pianists such as Liszt, Godowsky, Rosenthal and Friedman did not simply interpret repertoire: they recomposed and transformed it for their own instrument.
This is the context for Strauss Transformed. Rather than treating Johann Strauss II as a source for a collection of virtuoso arrangements, the project examines what happens when his music passes through the individual musical personalities of pianist-composers including Alfred Grünfeld, Leopold Godowsky, Moriz Rosenthal, Ignaz Friedman, Ernst von Dohnányi, Carl Tausig, Eduard Schütt and Erwin Schulhoff. The album comprises eleven such encounters.
These works preserve a culture in which performers were expected to bring a much more overtly creative relationship to existing music. Strauss Transformed therefore sits naturally alongside her earlier projects: it combines recognisable repertoire with music that has largely disappeared from modern recital programmes, while asking a broader question about the role of the pianist as interpreter and creator.
The recording also reflects Nareh Arghamanyan's long association with Bösendorfer. It was made in Vienna on a selected Bösendorfer 280VC inside the Bösendorfer Klaviermanufaktur, in both stereo and Dolby Atmos. The immersive version was planned alongside the stereo recording from the beginning. Its purpose is not to enlarge the piano or use conspicuous spatial effects, but to preserve the relationship between instrument, performer and the relatively intimate acoustic of the room.
Orchestral engagements have included Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. Conductors with whom she has worked include Riccardo Chailly, Kent Nagano, Sir Neville Marriner, Alain Altinoglu, Carl St. Clair and Michael Sanderling. Recital and festival appearances have taken her to venues including the Vienna Musikverein, Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Leipzig Gewandhaus and Lincoln Center, as well as festivals such as Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Bregenz, Colmar, Lanaudière, Tanglewood and Marlboro.
Nareh Arghamanyan’s recorded catalogue spans solo and concerto repertoire and has appeared on Pentatone, Sony Classical, Ulysses Arts and Hänssler Classic. Her Pentatone recordings include Rachmaninoff solo repertoire and concerto recordings of Liszt, Prokofiev and Khachaturian, including collaborations with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Alain Altinoğlu.
While the earlier part of her career established her principally through major concerto and virtuoso repertoire, her more recent work has increasingly centred on the construction of thematically coherent recital and recording projects: Femmes de Légende, devoted to piano music by women composers across three centuries; Frühlingsrauschen, exploring representations of spring in Romantic piano music; Strauss Transformed, 11 conversations between Johann Strauss II and pianists of the golden age.
Femmes de Légende received a nomination for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and Nareh subsequently was nominated for OPUS KLASSIK 2026 – Instrumentalist of the Year.
The Pianist-Creator Tradition
Pianists such as Liszt, Godowsky, Rosenthal and Friedman did not simply interpret repertoire: they recomposed and transformed it for their own instrument.
This is the context for Strauss Transformed. Rather than treating Johann Strauss II as a source for a collection of virtuoso arrangements, the project examines what happens when his music passes through the individual musical personalities of pianist-composers including Alfred Grünfeld, Leopold Godowsky, Moriz Rosenthal, Ignaz Friedman, Ernst von Dohnányi, Carl Tausig, Eduard Schütt and Erwin Schulhoff. The album comprises eleven such encounters.
These works preserve a culture in which performers were expected to bring a much more overtly creative relationship to existing music. Strauss Transformed therefore sits naturally alongside her earlier projects: it combines recognisable repertoire with music that has largely disappeared from modern recital programmes, while asking a broader question about the role of the pianist as interpreter and creator.
The recording also reflects Nareh Arghamanyan's long association with Bösendorfer. It was made in Vienna on a selected Bösendorfer 280VC inside the Bösendorfer Klaviermanufaktur, in both stereo and Dolby Atmos. The immersive version was planned alongside the stereo recording from the beginning. Its purpose is not to enlarge the piano or use conspicuous spatial effects, but to preserve the relationship between instrument, performer and the relatively intimate acoustic of the room.
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