The pianist Beatrice Rana, who at the age of 20 won the Silver Medal at the Van Cliburn Competition in 2013, has signed an exclusive recording contract with Warner Classics.

Her Warner debut, alongside Sir Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, will include Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 2 and will be released in the autumn.

Gramophone's Jed Distler greeted the recording that resulted from her Van Cliburn achievement in February last year, writing: 'I’ve saved the most naturally gifted and original of the 2013 Cliburn winners for last. Silver medalist Beatrice Rana’s Schumann Symphonic Etudes abound with tremendous colour and poetic sweep in every bar, gilded with changes of voicing and inner lines that evoke memories of Cortot and Novães without sounding the least bit contrived. In Bartók’s Out of Doors Suite, the Barcarolla’s polyphonic lines seem to emerge from separate pianos, while the Musette’s cluster chords are full-bodied and harmonically plangent. Rana’s powerful, assured shaping of the cross-rhythmic strands in ‘The Chase’ suggests a joyous tuned percussion ensemble. Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit starts from out of nowhere with a quicksilver, shimmering ‘Ondine’, then settles into a rock steady, multi-level ‘Le gibet’. ‘Scarbo’ ranges from gossamer filigree and utterly unsplintered rapid chord playing to whiplash climaxes that cut to the quick yet retain resonance and definition. In short, Beatrice Rana possesses an old soul that belies her 20 years, and more than a touch of genius.'