A pupil of Dukas and a lifelong friend of Ravel, the composer, pianist and critic Gustave Samazeuilh was a central figure in Parisian musical life over many decades. His skill as a pianist can be heard in the majestic colours and intense virtuosity of Le Chant de la mer (The song of the sea). From the Classical discipline of the Suite en sol (Suite in G) to the later Nocturne (the composer’s transcription of his symphonic poem Nuit), and Quatre Esquisses (Four Sketches), Samazeuilh’s voice emerges as one of remarkable originality and superb musical realisation.

Roger-Ducasse was a close friend of Debussy and a composer of considerable reputation in his day. His piano works range from exquisitely colourful wartime pieces such as Sonorités and the virtuosic Rhythmes, to a final innovative Romance that seems constantly on the brink of wandering away from tonal harmony. Multi award-winning pianist Joel Hastings, who died in 2016 aged only 46, has appeared on Naxos in an acclaimed American Classics title The Piano’s 12 Sides [8559751] with the music of Carter Pann.

Manuel Ponce was one of Mexico's most prolific and decorated composers and remains highly esteemed and popular today. Leaving Mexico midway through the Revolution, he lived in Cuba between 1915 and 1917 and soon absorbed the island's seductive Caribbean sensuality and subtle dances, also expressing melancholic nostalgia for his homeland in the Elegia de la ausencia. While living in Paris from 1925 to 1933, Ponce explored new compositional techniques, resulting in his own modernist style, as heard in the Suite bitonal which is notable not only for its use of polytonality but its inspired lyricism.

Manuel Ponce was the founder of Mexican musical nationalism, often incorporating the melodies of harmonised folk-songs into his music. Widely travelled—he studied in Europe, at first in Bologna and then, between 1925 and 1933, as a pupil of Dukas in Paris—Ponce assimilated a wide range of styles and influences, including European-influenced Romanticism, indigenous idioms and a more advanced harmonic language. This is the first of eight volumes devoted to Ponce’s complete piano music.

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REVIEWS:

I am enormously impressed both by the recording and by the performances.

Much of the music is virtuosic, but you might not always realise this, such is the skill that serves to hide the expertise. At no point is Cendoya fazed by the requirements of this aspect; instead he revels in the exotic sonorities and technical demands.

© MusicWeb International

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Cendoya captures the rhythmic swagger and melodic verve that runs through all of these pieces with charming, easy fluency. It’s infectious music, beautifully played—a welcome find among the slush pile of recent CDs.

© 2013 CBC

Highly respected in his day as a composer and pianist, but neglected after the Second World War, Walter Niemann (1876-1953), pupil of Humperdinck and Reinecke, amongst others, wrote prolifically for the piano in a romantic style with an underlying sense of passion and impressionist exoticism. Now resident in the UK, Ms. BingBing Li (b. 1987) has given solo recitals and with orchestra at leading concert venues and festivals throughout Europe and North America. ‘BingBing Li performed with vigor and authority; it was a refreshing contrast and a torrent of inventiveness…’ (London Times)

The history of Cuban music is the story of a fusion between European – largely Spanish – and African elements. Some of the finest, most stylistically diverse and exciting Cuban piano music can be heard on this album. Ernesto Lecuona is one of the greatest of all Latin American composers for the instrument, his Malagueña being the most powerful representation of Spain in Cuban music. Danzas afro-cubanas reflects the African influence on his music. Drawing on the genres of son and canción Carlos Fariñas's Cantero radiates vivid colour while the music of Andres Alen Rodríguez blends song, habanera and jazz influences.
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REVIEW:

This debut release by a young Cuban pianist makes a very good case for the compositions she includes and her skills in presenting them. A lovely disc—don’t miss it.

– American Record Guide

One of the foremost Soviet experimentalist composers of the early 20th century, Alexander Vasilyevich Mosolov was famed for his futuristic orchestral work, The Iron Foundry. After Mosolov’s imprisonment in 1938, he fell into obscurity. Conflicts with Soviet authorities led to his expulsion from the Composers' Union in 1936 and imprisonment in the Gulag in 1937. Following an early release, which had been argued for by his Conservatory teachers, Mosolov turned his attention to much more polite yet tuneful works, setting Turkmen and Kyrgyz folk tunes for orchestra. His later music conformed to the Soviet aesthetic to a much greater degree, yet he never regained the success of his early career. Olga Andryushchenko beautifully performs earlier works on this album.

Nikolay Medtner’s 14 piano sonatas are considered the most significant achievement in this genre by any composer since Beethoven. After the success of his First Piano Sonata (GP617) he turned to Goethe for inspiration, and the life and love-affirming Sonata-Triad Op. 11 translates the poet’s words of passion, suffering and redemption into sound. The capricious, mysterious and beautiful Sonata-Skazka is a masterpiece in miniature and was once Medtner’s most performed work. Dating from his years of exile, the eloquent themes of the fourteenth and final Sonata-Idyll linger long in the memory.

Nikolai Medtner's Sonata-Reminiscenza is one of eight substantial pieces published as his opp.38, 39 and 40, with the overall title of Forgotten Melodies. That would almost make a pithy hic jacet for a composer whose deeply imaginative, poignantly beautiful piano works make his historical neglect as bizarre as it is scandalous.

Canadian pianist Paul Stewart sets out to right some wrongs with this first of four volumes on Grand Piano dedicated to Medtner's fourteen Piano Sonatas. In his informative, well researched notes he points up both the diminutive nature of the Medtner discography and the fact that some recordings "are based on editions that contain misprints and other errors".

For his recital Stewart, a long-time champion of Medtner's music, plays a restored period Steinway actually performed on by the composer himself in 1929 in Montreal. Its tone is well worth hearing, especially in the fine audio on offer here, and Stewart's even more so: he gives an authoritative, expressive and thoroughly listener-friendly reading of Medtner's works, leaving a strong sense of anticipation for the remaining volumes.

Though an early work, the First Piano Sonata in F minor is a glorious, passionate work of writhing melodies and wistful harmony, quite possibly an ode to his brother's, and his own future, wife. The Sonata-Reminiscenza in A minor is Medtner's Tenth Sonata, and his most performed. Rightly so too: like much of Medtner's piano music, it calls to mind a less sombre, more emotionally 'stable' Rachmaninov - who referred to him, incidentally, as "the greatest composer of our time". Flowingly imaginative, the nostalgia of the title morphs into haunting melancholy - no coincidence that Medtner was about to leave his native Russia for good. The brief Sonatina is a bagatelle by comparison, but very agreeable in a similar kind of way. It was not published until 1981, and its two-movement structure suggests that Medtner had not quite finished with it.

This CD, like all those released by Grand Piano in its first year, features a cover painting by the Norwegian artist Gro Thorsen, which if nothing else adds to the collectibility of the series. One minor complaint about Grand Piano, however: for emphatically full-price discs, the running times are often on the short side. Another 22 welcome minutes' worth of Medtner would have fitted on here.

-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

The second volum in Giorgio Koukl's complete survey of Arthur Vincent Lourie's piano music spans the years 1912 to 1938. In that time the Belarus-born composer embraced extended tonality in Deux Poemes, Op. 8, huge Scriabinesque chords in Syntheses, Op. 16 and forward-looking harmonic astringency in the Sonatina No. 3. His post-Revolutionary Paris years are represented by a sequence of characterful miniatures.

Paul Le Flem belonged to the Parisian circle of Martinu, Tcherepnin and Tansman, summing up his own music as a fusion of three influences: his native Brittany, Debussy and D'Indy. His career was sadly interrupted by World War I, but the intense poetry of his earlier works reflect the ever-changing land and seascapes of Brittany, and the variety of its mysteries and legends from the lighthearted to the disquieting. Of special note among the premiere recordings on this album are the atonal Pour la Main Droite, the wartime Melancolie with its opening and perhaps ironic quotation from La Marseillaise, and Les Korrigans, a waltz inspired by the Korrigan, a magical creature in Breton folklore.

With the sea to the West and the Orient to the East, Lebanon is located exactly where both worlds meet. A remarkable blend of these influences can be heard in this exploration of three generations of Lebanese music, from Toufic Succar’s classically carefree Variations and Georges Baz’s “commemoration of Impressionism”, via the uncompromising modernity of Boghos Gelalian’s turbulent Toccata and Houtaf Khoury’s Third Sonata that represents “life in a country where politics shatter every dream.” The emotional intensity of these pieces reflect both a unique national temperament and the dramatic times in which they were written.

Finnish composer and conductor Toivo Kuula was a student of Sibelius, and pieces such as the majestic Juhlamarssi (“Festive March”) share the great master’s national flavor while the descriptive folktales of Satukuvia create their own beautifully romantic atmosphere. Kuula’s piano music is notable for its vast array of color and variety of style, from the melancholy Surumarssi (“Funeral March”) from Six Pieces, Op. 26 to the lighthearted Schottis (“Scottish Dance”), while countless Finnish couples have been married to the accompaniment of Kuula’s Haamarssi (“Wedding March”).

Multi prize-winning pianist Adam Johnson was a Scholar and Junior Fellow at The Royal Northern College of Music UK, studying with Martin Roscoe and performing under the baton of Kent Nagano, Martyn Brabbins, and George Hurst, making his Concerto debut aged 15 playing Mozart Piano Concerto No. 15 at the Glinka Accademia, St. Petersburg, conducting from the piano. Unique among the outstanding artists of his generation, Johnson is as equally at home conducting opera as he is fulfilling the role of soloist in concerto repertoire, playing chamber music, or directing his own large-scale compositions.

Friederich Kuhlau was among the most important early Romantic composers in Denmark, becoming known as the ‘Danish Beethoven’ for his popular works for flute. The etude-like Piano Sonata, Op. 127 reveals a deep expressiveness reminiscent of Chopin’s studies, while the sophisticated Piano Sonata, Op. 8a shows Kuhlau’s contemplative, darker side before closing with typical virtuoso esprit. The charm and elegance of the Sonatina, Op. 21 No. 1 has delighted piano students for generations. Jens Luhr was born in the same town as Friedrich Kuhlau, Uelzen, in northern Germany. There at the local music school, Luhr played- along with many other young piano students- the Kuhlau Sonatinas. He went on to study at the prestigious conservatories of music in Hannover, Wurzburg, Basle, and Leipzig. Luhr is known as a soloist and chamber musician, as well as being an interpreter of contemporary music, playing or taking part in several premieres. In 2012 and 2014 he won second prize at the International Music Competition of France in the highest category for pianists.

This is the final volume of Kemp English’s pioneering world premiere recording of Leopold Kozeluch’s complete solo keyboard sonatas. It is played, once again, on appropriate authentic instruments and charts just how profoundly Kozeluch’s style changed over the decades, from the charming early Sonata No. 47 for harpsichord to the three late romantic sonatas. The virtuosic Sonata No. 49, with its pedal effects and extended compass, shows techniques derived from the English Piano School and in the final sonata he encapsulates to perfection the sound world of early nineteenth-century Vienna.