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

This panoramic survey of Argentine tangos shows the genre in all its rich variety of moods and virtuosity. It salutes Angel Villoldo, the father of tango, whose El choclo (‘The Corncob’) is one of the most famous tangos of all time, and charts the music’s evolution towards the romanticism and lush harmonies of Augustín Bardi. Improvisatory styles, syncopation and jazz harmonies were introduced by such great composers as José Pascual and Orlando Goñi, whilst Enrique Francini developed his personal qualities of dissonance and rhythmic flair into the 1960s. This survey is the first in a series that will document around one hundred rare and classic tangos, all performed by the Argentine pianist Mirian Conti.

 

REVIEW:

 

Tangorama: a wonderful aural trip to the southernmost South American nation

Tangorama, Vol. 1 is the first of an upcoming series of tango albums lovingly selected and superbly played by the terrific Argentine-American pianist Mirian Conti. This first in the series features over two dozen gems that trace the development of the Argentine tango from its humble origins rooted in Afro-Argentine and Cuban-influenced dance forms birthed in the bars an dives on the shores of the River Plate to the sophisticated compositions of mid-20th century composer-performers that inflected the form with European harmonies and counterpoint while retaining the syncopated underpinning of the original dance form.

 

– Rafael's Music Notes (Rafael de Acha)

Argentine-American pianist and recording artist Mirian Conti has recently released her new solo album, Tangorama, performing a collection of 25 vintage tangos, written over the span of half a century. Tango originated in Argentina and Uruguay in the late 1800’s as immigrants poured in from all parts of Europe. They brought their music with them: waltzes, polkas and mazurkas, which blended with Cuban habanera and African candombe music and rhythms to create early forms of tango music and dance. These early years, from about 1895 to 1925, are known as Guardia Vieja, the Old Guard, when tango began to develop structure and identity. One of the early composers was Angel Villoldo (1861-1919), generally considered the father of the tango. Three of his tunes are included on this disc, all in early tango 2/4 duple meter. In 1903 Angel composed the well-known El Choclo, one of the best of the early tangos, which became a popular hit song again in 1952 as “Kiss of Fire”. Mirian performs these piano arrangements with a light, graceful touch and a delightful sense of rhythm, timing and phrasing. Another early tango is the famous La Cumparsita, the most popular tango ever written. It was composed in 1917 by Geraldo Matos Rodriguez (1897-1948), and originally written for a marching band. The tune is driven by the bold arrastre sound of slurring chords mixing with crisp staccatos.

The tango period known as Guardia Nueva, or New Guard, lasted roughly from 1925 to 1955. This included the Golden Age of the 1940’s, which was the hey-day of the big tango orchestras. Generally coinciding with the explosion of the Big Band era, tango began developing and maturing in form and complexity. Alfredo Gobbi (1912-1965) was a violinist and composer who wrote El Andariego in 1951. The tune features a smoother 4/8 meter, slower tempo, heavy rubato, and delicate staccato passages. From 1955 to 1970, tango went through an Avant-Garde period of development and began moving in new directions. Julian Plaza (1928-2003) was an outstanding musician and composer who wrote Melancolico in 1960 and Nostalgico in 1962. The tunes are intoxicating with dramatic tango rhythms, melodies and dissonant harmonic structures. Mirian presents them with beautiful dynamics and phrasing, meticulous keyboard technique and solid intuition.

This music was recorded on 15-24 September 2020 on two Yamaha Disklaviers, one each at Conti Studio in Buenos Aires and at Yamaha Artists Service in New York. Mirian Conti and G. Richard Glasford were the producers, and Aaron David Ross was the engineer. Joseph Patrych performed the mastering. A 28-page booklet is included, with photographs and commentary in Spanish and English. The sound quality is excellent.

--MusicWeb International (Bruce McCollum)

TIBOR HARSÁNYI, a student of Zoltán Kodály at the Budapest Conservatory, lived in France from 1923 where he became one of the leading expatriate composers to form the group known as L’École de Paris. As the 4 Morceaux show, his piano music is notable for its variety of character and genre. The Piano Sonata reveals his enthusiasm for dance rhythms and for joyful lyricism as well as quietly sombre elements, while the Burlesques flirt with jazz. The Piano Suite conjures up a vivid series of atmospheres in a work that is songlike, dissonant and ambient. GIORGIO KOUKL is a Czech pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He studied at both the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan, where he took part in the masterclasses of Nikita Magaloff, Jacques Février and Stanislas Neuhaus, and with Rudolf Firkušný, friend and advocate of Czech composer Bohuslav Martin?. It was through Firkušný that Koukl first encountered Martin?‘s music, prompting him to search out his compatriot’s solo piano works. Since then he has developed these into an important part of his concert repertoire and is now considered one of the world’s leading interpreters of Martin?’s piano music. As a logical continuation of this work, Koukl has recorded the complete solo piano works of Paul Le Flem, Alexander Tcherepnin, Arthur Lourié, Vít?zslava Kaprálová, Witold Lutos?awski, and more recently, Alexandre Tansman, Vittorio Rieti and Tibor Harsányi.

ALEXANDER AFANASYEVICH SPENDIAROV (SPENDIARIAN) was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and a close friend of Glazunov who wrote that he was a 'musician with an impeccable, widely versatile technique'. Spendiarov's music combines Russian and Armenian elements and is saturated in folkloric influence - and he vitally enriched the expressive range of Armenian music as a composer, pedagogue and champion of his contemporaries. His piano works, both for solo instrument and for chamber forces, show the range of his gifts, not least his romances and lullabies, and range across his entire compositional life. Spendiarov's songs, heard here in piano transcriptions by Villy Sargsyan, perfectly preserve the unique timbres and textures of these works. MIKAEL AYRAPETYAN is a pianist, composer and producer. He is also the founder and artistic director of the music project Secrets of Armenia, which aims to increase international awareness of Armenian classical music, and actively organizes concerts featuring Armenian music in venues around the world, for which he is producer, artistic director and pianist. Born in 1984 in Yerevan, Armenia, he studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, and continues to uphold the performing traditions of the Russian piano school, of which Konstantin Igumnov, Samuel Feinberg and Lev Oborin are luminaries. His repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works by Armenian composers. His recording of Eduard Bagdasarian's piano and violin music [GP664] earned a five-star rating from International Piano, and his album of Haro Stepanian's 24 Preludes [GP760] was praised as a "discovery" by both Classica and Piano News.

Jan Hugo VoriSek, the 'prodigy from Prague', arrived in Vienna at the age of twenty-two and almost immediately earned the approval and admiration of Beethoven. His earliest works foreshadow German Romanticism, but he remained so individualistic a composer that he resists easy categorization either as a Classicist or a Romantic. His works were written within a nine-year span of his sadly short life but in that time he mastered sonata form, Rhapsodies and Impromptus to become one of Vienna's leading composers. The third volume of this exploratory series charts the Rhapsodies, Op. 1 of the Czech-born Jan Hugo Vor�Sek, later to establish himself as one of Vienna's greatest composers. They were largely written in Prague and are rigorous in form and poetic in spirit. Some of the twelve embody elements of Romanticism, prefiguring the later works of Chopin and Schumann, and their ardent lyricism establishes VoriSek as one of the pioneers of the rhapsody in music.

Giorgio Koukl's survey of Alexander Tcherepnin's inventive piano music continues with two 1950s collections that reflect a synthesis of the composer's many earlier technical and expressive innovations - the virtuosic Eight Pieces, Op. 88 and the beguiling Expressions, Op. 81.

Hélène de Montgeroult began her career as a student of Muzio Clementi in Paris. She survived the French Revolution – during which, as an aristocrat, her life was in grave danger – to become a celebrated pianist, composer and author of a famous piano method. Her compositional language in these nine sonatas is wide and includes Italianate models as well as elements that reflect the influences of Franz Joseph Haydn and Wofgang Amadeus Mozart, with chromatic and surprising harmonies, contrasts of register, chorale-like nobility and brilliantly athletic finales. Featuring several world première recordings, these sonatas represent a major contribution to the French repertoire of the late Classical and early Romantic periods, played with characteristic brilliance and subtlety by the composer's latest champion: Nicolas Horvath.

Maltese composer Karl Fiorini is a European without frontiers – the compositions in this album reflect his early detachment from a Mediterranean identity towards a more varied and intense sound world. Trio Lamina features elements of Bartók’s ‘night music’ in its complex sub-sections, whereas Fiorini’s two piano studies, which predate his move to Paris, already exude a Gallic ambience. Influenced by North African folk music, the Piano Trio expands his global reach, and the Piano Sonata, a gritty virtuoso concert piece, shifts geographical influence towards Eastern Europe to powerful effect. All of these world première recordings were recorded in the presence of the composer.

REVIEWS:

This program is a shining example of a 21st-century composer who has stepped back from the extremist styles of the mid-late 20th century to re-embrace communication with an audience, but has taken elements from those styles into his own armory.

Karl Fiorini (b. 1979) references Minimalism alongside Lisztian bravura in the first of his Piano Études (2007–08), Middle Eastern syncopation in his 2017 Piano Sonata, and Neoclassical momentum plus Webernian fragmentation in the Trio Lamina (2002).

He draws on the characteristics of recent schools without adhering to their strict rules or specific aims. He knows his instruments, and his chamber music on this showing is bracingly virtuosic. Like other contemporary composers such as Francisco Coll, he has created a strong voice by synthesizing disparate elements so they emerge as subtle flavors, to use a cooking metaphor. (Much 21st-century music resembles modern fusion cuisine.)

The latest work on this program is a quartet, In the Midst of Things (2019), utilizing the same instrumental combination as Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. I think Fiorini deliberately echoes that seminal work in the first movement, which begins with a languorous cello melody accompanied by full, stately chords from the piano, but he soon turns away from it. By the time we reach the closing Presto movement we are in a bustling world of earthy joie de vivre of a type Messiaen never attempted. Again, Eastern rhythms feature.

I greatly enjoyed these examples of Fiorini’s work. He may be an instinctive composer as he claims, but his instinct is clearly based in a solid grounding of acquired knowledge and continual exploration. The sound and performances are excellent. For those interested in new music, this disc is an exciting and not overly demanding example.

-- Fanfare

The early Trio Lamina (2002) for violin, clarinet, and piano sports an arch form and a spooky atmosphere reminiscent of Bartok. The Two Piano Etudes (2008) have a Gallic neo-Impressionism; and the Piano Trio (2005) has echoes of North African folk music in the use of hexachords and modes in retrograde and inversion. The Piano Sonata (2017) is a dense and demanding concert piece inspired by the music of Eastern Europe.

In the Midst of Things (2019) is a four-movement work for clarinet and piano trio that takes a Beethoven-like approach to structure, balancing intricate theory with carefully timed emotion. The performers bring out the best in the scores, rendering them all with marvelous skill, vigor, transparency, and commitment[.]

-- American Record Guide

- Tanya Ekanayaka is one of Sri Lanka's foremost pianists and an internationally acclaimed composer. - Her "deeply autobiographical" piano compositions, or reinventions, introduce a novel and hybrid musical genre that takes a wide variety of Sri Lankan melodies - ancient, folk and popular - and blends them with motifs inspired by the tonal centers of established classical compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Ravel and others. - "My music is my diary, through which I share and re-live specific moments of my life... each work in this album may also be seen as re-presenting my indigenous culture while seeking to highlight connectivity between the different works of a concert program in which the work might be incorporated."

Iranian Composer Afshin Jaberi's Powerful Music Combines 19th Century Western Piano Traditions with Eastern Melodic Influences. It Is Strongly Connected with the Message of Equality and Peaceful Unity Promoted By His Religious Faith. The Bab Ballades Depict Dramatic Heroism and Tragic Sacrifice, While the Sonatas Express the Horrors of War and the Fragility of Remote Cultures, Out of Which New Hope and the Chance for Reconciliation Can Emerge. Art Was Always the Center of My Life; I Was Always Attracted to Beauty and Striving Towards Harmony; the Music in This Recording Was a Beginning of a Spiritual Journey, a Journey of Faith, Sacrifice, a Path of Life with Deep Emotional Affections... They Were My Remedy Facing the Hardships and Calamities and Challenges of My Life. - Afshin Jaberi.

Best known for his influential Klavierschule, Daniel Gottleib Turk's inventive and widely expressive sonatas, 48 in number, grew from the expressive potential of the genre shown by North German composers like C.P.E. Bach. The five instruments played by Michael Tsalka in this recording reflect the diversity of those instruments available in Turk's day, played with the nuances from the composer's own dynamic markings.

Tcherepnin: Piano Music, Vol. 5

Everything I undertake misfires immediately. I produce dirty rubbish and that will accomplish nothing. So wrote Erik Satie in 1903 during a period of transition that saw him produce the last of his Rose + Croix style music in Verset laique & somptueux, but in making a living writing for the music halls, he also created hugely popular songs such as Je te veux. The works on this fourth volume of Satie's complete solo piano music were written between 1897 and 1906. They include rare theater music and tender waltzes that contrast with jaunty ragtime and pantomime dances. Nicolas Horvath began his music studies at the Academie de Musique et de Theatre Prince Rainier III, and at the age of 16 he caught the attention of the American conductor Lawrence Foster. His other mentors include a number of distinguished international pianists, including Liszt specialist Leslie Howard. He is the holder of a number of awards, including First Prize of the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions. He has become noted for hosting concerts of unusual length, sometimes lasting over twelve hours, such as the performance of the complete piano music of Erik Satie at the Paris Philharmonie before an audience of 14,000 people and recently played together with Philip Glass also at the Paris Philharmonie.

Distinguished Hungarian composer Sandor Balassa’s philosophy on his music is that it ‘has to be whole, beautiful, interesting and appealing; as natural as if it were this way since the beginning of time, and so that anyone can pick it up with a feeling of joy.’ Balassa’s uniquely sophisticated textures, timbres and lyrical style can be heard here in pieces for young pianists, remarkable works originally written for cimbalom, an din the Baroque references and sweeping momentum of the Szonatina No. 1. Istvan Kassai graduated as a pianist from the Budapest Academy of Music in 1982 studying in the class of Pal Kadosa. In 1984 he pursued a second diploma at the Conservatoire Europeen de Musique under the closer supervision of professor Yvonne Lefebure. He also undertook several master courses, including one led by Gyorgy Dziffra, who had a great impact on Kassai’s artistic development. During his career, Kassai has won several first prizes in international competitions such as the International Piano Competition for Young Artists in 1972 in Czechoslovakia, the Piano Competition organized by Hungarian Radio in 1979, and the Paris International Debussy Piano Competition in 1982.

Drawn from different parts of Tcherepnin's life, the Entretiens display distinct cinematic qualities. With their exhaustive range of expression the Twelve Preludes vividly demonstrate the multi-faceted genius of their composer. The Romances contrast tenderness and warmth with unsettling moods and the Five Concert Etudes show an infatuation with all things Chinese.

Alfred Cortot: Piano Arrangements

Nino Rota embraced neo-Classical, neo-Romantic and even neo-Baroque affiliations. His music prized melodic directness and communicative generosity and it is not therefore surprising that he should be best known for his epochal film scores – the music for The Godfather pre-eminently. Nino Rota’s 15 Preludes utilise melodic and harmonic explorations to chart music that is agitated and melancholic, but also joyous and comedic. The Fantasia in G comprises seven themes – folkloric, droll and ultimately heroic. A late work, the 7 Pezzi difficili per bambini is generous in its emotional directness. Eleanor Hodgkinson is a sought-after pianist and chamber musician. She partners a wide range of soloists and has performed at major venues including the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Symphony Hall in Birmingham and St. John’s Smith Square. Recitals have taken her to North America, Denmark, Holland, Germany and France as well as extensive travel aboard cruise liners. She is one half of the piano duo, Duo Volante, and is the pianist with the Nimbus Ensemble and Harborough Collective. Eleanor also works with the Orchestra of the Swan and Mid-Wales Opera. As a founder member of the Elgin Piano Trio, she played throughout the UK to critical acclaim from 1999 to 2009. Her versatility has led to numerous collaborations, including a commission The Archduke Variations, with dancers of the Royal Ballet and premieres of British music in the Vigani’s Cabinet project at Queens’ College, Cambridge 2005–2007.

 

REVIEW:

 

Nino Rota wrote in many musical forms including film scores, concert music, and for solo instruments. Most listeners are familiar with his film scores for Federico Fellini and Franco Zefferelli. Rota wrote for a wide variety of musical requirements, but his style remained primarily neo-classical and neo-romantic. This worthwhile release explores some of the lesser known Rota repertory.

 

The 15 Preludes are from 1964—a very productive period for Rota, including several film scores and concert pieces that reflect a neo-classical sound, similar to Prokofieff. Some of the Preludes’ melancholic nature is like some of his film scores with a wistfulness and introspectiveness (marked Andante) that are low-key. But most of the Preludes are marked Allegro or Allegretto. Each is about two minutes so must make its point quickly with little development.

 

The Fantasia in G (1944-1945) in comparison is absolutely beautiful. At 16 minutes the seven main themes are fully developed and intermixed, and there is a restrained tension that overlies the neo-romantic sound. There are several lovely sequences, some with a folk-like character. Rota uses a sufficient variety of modes, rhythms, metric patterns, and musical progressions to maintain interest. You’ll want to repeat this almost immediately.

 

The Seven Difficult Pieces for Children are deceptively simple in texture and direct in their melodies and emotional communication with the listener. They sound somewhat similar to Bela Bartok’s Mikrokosmos. They are all very enjoyable and display a lighter side to Rota’s music.

Ms. Hodgkinson plays all beautifully, with a solid warm tone that draws the listener into the music. The sound is exceptional. I enjoyed this.

 

– American Record Guide

Tibor Harsányi is always associated with ‘L’École de Paris’, a loosely knit collection of expatriate composers living in the city, among them Martin?, Tansman and Tcherepnin. He embraced music from a wide variety of sources, notably from North and South America, and this enriched his own music’s rhythmic vitality and sense of color. In his piano music, Harsányi drew on diverse source material, a free-spirited absorption of Hungarian traditions, neo-Baroque, the comic and jazz, as can be heard in the 5 Préludes brefs. Baby-Dancing draws on the foxtrot, Boston, czárdás and samba, while La Semaine, seven pieces, one for each day of the week, contains nocturnes of stillness, off-beat folk songs and a wealth of color and verve. Giorgio Koukl is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He was born in Prague in 1953, and studied there at the State Music School and Conservatory. He continued his studies at both the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan, where he took part in the masterclasses of Nikita Magaloff, Jacques Février, and Stanislaus Neuhaus, and with Rudolf Firkušný, friend and advocate of Czech composer Bohuslav Martin?.

Svein Hundsnes is one of Norway’s most important living composers. He has written a wide-ranging body of music encompassing several vivid styles, moving seamlessly from tonal and non-tonal music to include jazz, rock and even funk. Hundsnes’ sequence of Clavinatas – one-movement free-standing pieces with a symmetrical form that often include toccata-like vitality – embody qualities that make his music so distinctive. Often syncopated, they possess short motifs, intensity and emotional ambiguity. Piano Sonata No. 1 and Downtoned Beats reflect his delight in drama and dance grooves. Finnish pianist Laura Mikkola has studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. She studied with Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, Gary Graffman, Dmitri Baskirov, Tapani Valsta and attended masterclasses of Ferenc Rados. Ms. Mikkola has been the recipient of many awards, among them the second prize in the prestigious Queen Elisabeth International Piano Competition of Brussels (1995), the first prize in the International Unisa Transnet Piano Competition in Pretoria, Republic of South Africa, the first prize in the Maj Lind Competition in Helsinki (1992), and the first prize in the International M. Ravel Piano Competition in France (1988).

Norwegian composer SVEIN HUNDSNES has written a considerable number of works ranging from concertos to pieces for young musicians. His piano music is stylistically wide-ranging and occupies a significant place in his oeuvre. Piano Sonata No. 2 exemplifies his practice of working from tiny core motifs as he makes a series of connections between each vivid movement. Syncopated rhythms animate Vinterdanser (‘Winter Dances’) – a sequence of round dances; whereas torches swirling in the air, a cradle song and clouds of illuminated water particles are magically evoked in Nuances de Lumière (‘Shades of Light’). Finnish pianist Laura Mikkola, continues her critically acclaimed discovery, in this second volume of Hundsnes’ piano works.

The eight works in this album explore reflections on the eight planets of the solar system and the earth’s seven continents. Most bear echoes of traditional melodies originating from indigenous peoples. Largely composed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanya Ekanayaka’s passionate awareness of the connections and congruences between the past and present is reflected in her vision of harmonious co-existence. In this cycle she presents a tapestry of moods – tenderness, fantasy and vivid ‘trans-creations’ of ancient melodies. DR TANYA EKANAYAKA is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning Sri Lankan-British concert composer-pianist. Although trained as a pianist, her compositional skills are the result of a purely intuitive and natural development. Influenced by her multifaceted background, multilingualism, ambidexterity and partial color synesthesia her works which she describes as ‘deeply autobiographical’ and which evolve when she is at the piano (and at times in her dreams), have not been scored in any form but remain precisely frozen in her memory once evolved. Consistent with her interdisciplinary background, she holds a doctorate for interdisciplinary research involving Linguistics and Musicology from The University of Edinburgh, where she has also been engaged part time in academic teaching since 2007, as well as advanced academic and professional qualifications in Music Performance, Linguistics and Literature.

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.

This program reverses time, revealing the Metamorphosis in Glass’s work from his 1980s film and theatre transcriptions, through The Olympian composed for the Los Angeles Olympiad, to rarities such as the dream-like Coda. The Trilogy Sonata highlights Glass’s renowned operas from the celebratory Akhnaten Dance to the stately Satyagraha and landmark Einstein on the Beach. The dazzling pulse-patterns of Two Pages make it a milestone of minimalism, while the Sonatina No. 2 is a pre-minimalist work composed when Glass was a student of Darius Milhaud at Juilliard.

-----

Review:

Nicolas Horvath's own liner notes to this recording reveal his inclination toward analytical detail. He extracts thematic material from the rotating structures that Glass sets spinning like so many Buddhist prayer wheels. In doing so he compels the listener to experience the music more melodically than its hypnotic patterns might otherwise allow. Presenting this repertoire in such a deeply engaging and listenable way makes Horvath a compelling interpreter.

– The Whole Hote

The eight world premiere recordings included in this programme are played from a treasure trove of unpublished manuscripts obtained by Geoffrey Burleson from the Bibliotheque nationale de France, each of them filled with strong and imaginative ideas. Further virtuosic rarities by Saint-Saens include a solo transcription of his exotic Africa for piano and orchestra, and fantasies on works by Beethoven, Gounod, Liszt, Bizet, and others. Geoffrey Burleson has an active career as a performing artist, and has performed in such prestigious venues as the Eglise St-Merri, Paris; the American Academy in Rome; the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki; the Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall, Athens; the National Museum of Art, Mexico City and De Doelen, Rotterdamas as well as with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Arlington and New England Philharmonics, and the Holland Symfonia. He is on the piano faculty of Princeton University and the City University of New York Graduate Center, and is professor of music and director of piano studies at Hunter College, CUNY.

Regarded in his lifetime as one of the foremost composers of the romantic era Raff was forgotten for most of the 20th century. Now his reputation is being restored as a new generation of performers and music lovers rediscover him and treasure his music's beauty and vitality. Vol. 3 of his complete solo piano works Includes world premiere recordings.