Cliburn silver winner gets a record deal. Anyone seen gold?

The Italian pianist Beatrice Rana, who came second in the last Van Cliburn competition, has cut her first recording with Sir Antonio Pappano in a new album deal with Warner Classics. Details below.

Warner Classics is delighted to announce the exclusive signing of Beatrice Rana, who shot to stardom at just 20 years of age when she claimed the Silver Medal and the coveted Audience Award in the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

This month, in Rome, she has just finished recording her Warner Classics debut album with Sir Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The thrilling programme – Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat Minor, and Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto – is a bold statement for a virtuoso who ‘possesses an old soul that belies her twenty years, and more than a touch of genius’ (Gramophone).

In an interview with Repubblica newspaper in Italy, Rana praised Pappano as a ‘formidable conductor with prodigious energy. I admire his dedication as well as his rustic, hands-on approach. My grandparents toiled the land and this has had a profound impact on me: the cult of manual labour with hands which is so integral to our work as musicians.’

Born in 1993, the daughter of two pianists, Rana made her orchestral debut at the age of nine. She has amassed an impressive number of first prizes in international piano competitions, such as Muzio Clementi Competition, the International Piano Competition of the Republic of San Marino and the Bang&Olufsen PianoRAMA Competition. She was selected in 2010 as one of the six pianists taking part in the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Prize, attending a prestigious masterclass with Arie Vardi, with whom she now studies in Hannover. On 1st August, she makes her Verbier Festival recital debut, stepping in for Mikhail Pletnev.