From the early 19th century up until the early 20th the piano was your home entertainment center, before radio and recordings were invented or widely available. This meant that if you wanted to check out Brahms’ new symphony or Verdi’s new opera, either you had to attend a live performance or play it on the piano, usually with friends or family members. This is why most orchestral, choral, operatic, and chamber works were disseminated in the form of four-hand piano arrangements.

As an avid duet player, Robert Schumann not only wrote delightful original pieces in this genre but also supervised four-hand arrangements of his works, although he created relatively few of these himself. At first Otto Dresel’s arrangement of the A major String Quartet Op. 41 No. 3 met with Schumann’s approval; nevertheless, the composer made revisions, adding slower metronome indications to better accommodate the piano’s extended register and sonority. In fact, Schumann listed this arrangement in his catalog of works. Here the Dresel/Schumann A major quartet receives its premiere recording as part of the first of a projected seven-disc survey of Schumann piano duet arrangements by the composer, his friends, and associates.

You can’t help but respect the Eckerle Piano Duo’s meticulously calibrated ensemble values and rhythmic exactitude, although a slightly faster second movement basic tempo might convey the composer’s agitato directive more effectively. Surprisingly, the Piano Quintet’s strong textural contrasts and sense of interplay between musicians loses very little in translation to the piano duet medium, possibly due to Clara Schumann’s intelligent balancing of registers and liberal yet discreet deployment of octave doublings.

By contrast, Theodor Kirchner’s transcription published by C. F. Peters is more conservatively laid out for two players, and consequently is less interesting to hear, although much easier to play. Again, the Eckerle Duo has worked out the balances, tempo relationships, dynamic scaling, and pedaling to an impressively polished degree; you’ll never hear the Scherzo’s ornaments so uniformly and accurately articulated, for example. At the same time, I prefer the shapely exuberance, supple playfulness, and conversational give and take that the Duo d’Accord brings to its Oehms Classics world-premiere recording. Piano-arrangement mavens considering this release may be further tempted by its excellent sound, plus Joachim Draheim’s well-written and informative booklet notes.

-- Jed Distler ClassicsToday.com

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This is the first of five recordings dedicated to Beethoven's complete symphonies transcriptions. Gabriele Baldocci has appeared at the most important concert halls and at major music festivals. He is an ambassador, performer and professor of the Martha Argerich Presents Project and frequently plays in chamber ensembles.

CELLOBRATION • Amit Peled (vc); Eliza Ching (pn) • CENTAUR 3047 (59:30)


MENDELSSOHN On Wings of Song , op. 34/2. DAVIDOFF At the Fountain, op. 20/2. ECCLES Cello Sonata in g. GRANADOS Spanish Dance, op. 37/No. 5, “Andaluza” (“Playera”). FAURÉ Elégie. LIGETI Sonata for Solo Cello . BACH Pastorella in F. GLAZUNOV Chant du Ménéstrel. F. COUPERIN Pièces en Concert. CASALS Song of the Birds


Here is a collection of works for cello and piano both familiar and unfamiliar. Among the familiar are Fauré’s popular Élégie —albeit better known in its orchestral setting—transcribed for cello and piano, and Mendelssohn’s On Wings of Song , originally an actual song for voice and piano, that has been arranged and transcribed many times (Liszt and Heifetz both had a crack at it). In the unfamiliar category are a cello sonata by the virtually unknown Henry Eccles (1670–1742)—an English Baroque musician who ended up a member of Louis XIV’s King’s Band—and practically everything else on the disc, which though well known to cellists and often recorded, are not your usual fare on recital programs, except perhaps as encore pieces.


The Israeli-born Amit Peled plays a c.1689 cello by Andrea Guarneri, updated and fitted to modern standards. This, as far as I can tell, is only Peled’s second CD; the first, released in 2009 (Centaur 2988) was titled The Jewish Soul , and consisted of Jewish themed works, though not all necessarily by Jewish composers. For example, it included Bruch’s ubiquitous Kol Nidrei.


The “discovery” on this new disc is the Eccles sonata. Very little is known about this obscure violinist/composer, other than that he was born in England, was the elder brother to a more successful sibling John, whose success over his own he resented. Peeved by his perceived neglect, he moved to Paris, where he got himself hired on at the King’s court. What music he did write was either adapted from works by the Italian composer Giuseppe Valentini (1681–1753) or heavily influenced by them. In 1732, Eccles published 12 sonatas for gamba and figured bass; but according to the booklet note, the G-Minor Sonata given on the present CD is a transcription from an earlier set of violin sonatas. It takes the form of a typical sonata da chiesa (slow, fast, slow, fast), and considering its model, the piece, not surprisingly, is in an Italian style similar to what you would expect to hear from Vivaldi. What is perhaps surprising is that for a composer as virtually unknown as Eccles, there are five listed recordings of this sonata, going all the way back to a 1930 violin version played by Jacques Thibaud.


Latvian-born and Russian-trained, Carl (Karl) Davidoff (1838–89) was one of the great cello virtuosos of the 19th century. Tchaikovsky hailed Davidoff as “the tsar of cellists,” and the two men were friends and associates through their mutual connection to the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Davidoff’s At the Fountain is a popular encore piece that has had several recordings, including ones by Pieter Wispelwey, Miklós Perényi, and Jan Vogler. How would I describe the piece? A Flight of the Honeybee for cello: a nice little A-B-A form in which the bee leaves the hive and busily buzzes about to gather nectar and pollinate the petals (A), tarries momentarily to make love to a flower (B), and assisted by a tailwind returns home to the hive faster than it left (A).


From the 12 Spanish Dances by Enrique Granados, Peled plays a cello arrangement of the most popular number in the set, the No. 5. Titled Andaluza in the composer’s original version for piano, the piece has alternately come to be called Playera . It can be heard on some 140 recordings in arrangements for guitar, violin, voice, and in its original piano version, including by the composer himself. Nor does Peled have the field all to himself on cello. The piece has been recorded by Alban Gerhardt and Jamie Walton. One can easily appreciate the great popularity of the piece. Its guitar-like strumming accompaniment provides the underpinning for an alluring melody in the style of a seguidilla, a folksong or dance of Castillian origin. Bizet drew upon the seguidilla for his aria “Près des ramparts de Séville” in Carmen.


György Ligeti’s Sonata for Cello Solo has also received its fair share of recordings, one of which in particular, with Matt Haimovitz on Deutsche Grammophon, is especially noteworthy. Not unlike Paul Kletzki, the Jewish-Hungarian Ligeti (1923–2006) also suffered at the hands of both the Nazis and the Soviet Communists. The sonata heard here did not receive its first performance until 1983, but it’s an early work dating from the composer’s Hungarian period. In only two movements, its first was written in 1948, when Ligeti was 25; its second movement, five years later in 1953. The piece is clearly influenced by Bartók and Kodály. Glissando chords and pizzicato punctuate a melancholy “Dialogo,” marked adagio , followed by a moto perpetuo Capriccio, marked presto con slancio , a real test of the player’s mettle.


Bach’s F-Major Pastorella was originally composed as a four-movement suite for organ. Only its opening movement is heard here, but Bach recycled its concluding Gigue as the closing movement to the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. According to the booklet note, this arrangement by Pablo Casals, in a handwritten score, was acquired by the Beaux Arts Trio’s cellist, Bernard Greenhouse, and from him passed to Peled.


Glazunov’s Chant du Ménéstrel (Troubadour’s Song) is almost as popular, if you count numbers of recordings, as the Granados Playera . Frankly, it’s little more than a sentimental salon piece that happens to have been made famous by Beatrice Harrison, the British cellist who had the distinction of being Elgar’s handpicked player to make the official HMV recording of the composer’s Cello Concerto under his direction.


When it comes to the Couperin Pièces en Concert , I wish I could cite its provenance definitively, but unfortunately, neither the CD’s track listing nor the booklet note identifies the specific set of suites whence it comes. Even more curiously, other recordings of the work, as well as other references to it, are equally silent on the subject. Finally, by searching for a combination of Couperin and Bazelaire, the work’s arranger, I hit upon a program note from the 2002 Tyalgum (New South Wales) Festival that asserts that Bazelaire’s arrangement is a mixed-movement compilation drawn from Couperin’s Nouveaux Concerts published in 1724.


If you check ArkivMusic’s listing for the Casals piece under its English title, Song of the Birds , you will find only this one recording by Peled. But there are a couple of others listed under its Spanish title, El Cant dels Ocells . I’d have expected more, including one by the renowned cellist himself. The piece is an arrangement of a traditional Catalan folk song, which embodies, in Peled’s words, “a spiritual communication.”


I’ve said nothing about the Mendelssohn or Fauré pieces because they’re so well known there’s nothing to say.


By all evidence, Amit Peled is a superb cellist. His technical prowess in the Davidoff and Ligeti vouchsafe that; and his tone, of pellucid purity, gleams with a glint of gold in the slow, lyrical numbers. As an introduction to the artistry of this fine up-and-coming young artist, this album showcases his versatility in a wide range of repertoire. But now that Peled has produced two CDs of what are essentially arrangements, encore pieces, and lighter fare—except for the Eccles and Ligeti sonatas—I look forward to hearing him in some of the more substantial repertoire for his instrument. Pianist Eliza Ching has a somewhat lesser role to play in some of these numbers, but she carries out her role as accompanist admirably. Recorded sound is excellent. Recommended for an hour’s worth of canapés to whet the appetite; now bring on the main course.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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.

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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

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Composer Christopher Roberts’s four serene yet deeply emotive pieces for solo qin (a Chinese zither-like instrument) are quiet, sparce, slightly eerie, almost Feldmanesque. Performed by the composer, who learned the qin while living and teaching for many years in Taiwan. This is a 30-minute CD EP/single. “So Confucius walks into a bar, just in time for Bill Evans’s last set, and after closing time pulls out his qin for a few solos … That’s the vibe that Christopher Roberts captures in these intimate nocturnal musings where crystalline harmonics dance among gutsy bass slides while elegant harmonies whisper their most private thoughts. A truly haunting recording.” [John Schneider, Host of KPFK’s Global Village] “The most Chinese of instruments, the qin has roots in the ancient literati tradition…. Having studied its classical tradition in Taiwan, the quixotic Roberts (also a double bassist) also brings his own traditions of jazz, blues, and solo improvisation to the table. While starting somewhere near its traditional core, Roberts bends his instrument in new directions entirely, turning it westwards even as he faces east.” [Gramophone magazine] “‘Exotic’ is a relative term. Gorecki's music is exotic compared to Lloyd Webber’s, Ligeti’s music is exotic compared to Gorecki’s, and Christopher Roberts’ music is exotic compared to nearly any music you are likely to think of.… Last Cicada Singing integrates Eastern and Western music so well, finding their common ground in calm reflection of natural sounds and processes. Sit back, relax, contemplate.” [Malcolm Tattersall, Music & Vision] “You-are-there-grade realism. The recording is Christopher Roberts’ hauntingly beautiful and stunningly well-recorded Last Cicada Singing [Absolute Sound magazine] “Mesmerizing sounds...quiet, sparse, serene music.” [Michael Barone, Minnesota Public Radio]

Tim Fain has constructed an adventurous and exciting recital of American violin music. It takes in the concert version of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach-Fain "played the hell out of the piece".

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.

Includes work(s) by Kaikhosru Sorabji. Soloist: Michael Habermann.

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BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 6 in F; No. 29 in B?, “Hammerklavier.” SCHUBERT Impromptu in B?, D 935/3 • Wilhelm Backhaus (pn) • ICA 5055 (62:35) Live: Bonn 9/24/1959


This recital features Wilhelm Backhaus (1884–1969) near the end of his long career. The German pianist was known throughout his lifetime for his interpretations of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Mozart primarily, though it should not be forgotten that he was the first person ever to record the 24 Chopin etudes back in 1928. This recording remains a remarkable document of the ease of execution and the elegance of musical interpretation he shared with certain members of that generation of pianists. His technique was formidable in his heyday and—perhaps even more astonishing—it remained so to the very end of his career.


The opening of the “Hammerklavier” Sonata is a bit slow and heavy, but this soon gives way to a torrent of energy and an upsurge in tempo just a few bars later. Backhaus seems to want to show that each theme, each section, has its own character, which needs an adjustment in tempo to best bring that out. The pianist makes the most of the diverse musical sections in the sonata, from the fluid and graceful scalar passages in the first movement, which sound like shimmering silky waves made of delicate musical fabric in his hands, to the big chordal passages, which are powerful walls of sound that surround and engulf the listener. Backhaus has no qualms about enhancing the effect of certain of these latter passages by adding extra sonority in the bass parts—most often just doubling the octave. The slow movement, one of the most difficult and sublime in Beethoven’s oeuvre, is emotionally taxing to even the most seasoned performers. Backhaus intelligently chooses a flowing tempo: never so slow as to drag, but never too fast as to trivialize the music. The finale is taken at a brisk pace. There may be a few wrong notes here and there (albeit not very many), but his sense of pacing is thrilling: There is more than just a sense of danger; there is in his interpretations the conviction that regardless of the obstacles, he will triumph in the end. There is as much fire in this “Hammerklavier” as the best of them.


The other works on the recital are well played as well, the Schubert being particularly inspired. The gentle way in which the pianist caresses the instrument betrays the age in which he matured: This is elegant and lyrical, and Backhaus shows that though this composition is in the same key as Beethoven’s grandest essay for the piano, it is in character lightyears apart. The Beethoven F-Major Sonata is no minor work, and Backhaus gives it all the respect and love that he does the rest of the program. The opening movement is playful in that Haydnesque vein, the fugato finale lighthearted yet filled with Beethovenian determination and drive. The quirky middle movement is perhaps my favorite in the sonata, though. Backhaus revels in the mysterious opening phrases, lightening the path through the middle section, bringing the piece to a wistful end. It is three and a half minutes of pure bliss.


This is a remarkable recital, one that grows on you the more you listen to it—one captured in remarkable sound given its vintage. For a live recital, one should expect a few wrong notes here and there. Backhaus at 75 plays as few as I’ve ever heard in a riveting performance of the “Hammerklavier.” This is no lightweight rendering of the piece, either; this is one to remember. That said, I have a few other favorites: Richter, Gilels, Rudolf Serkin. The one that I come back to more than any other, though, is Peter Serkin (on Pro Arte). There is in his playing the soaring of spiritual heights along with a real sense of structural logic. The fugal finale is brisk, light, rhythmic—almost jazzy—in his hands. But Backhaus is a welcome addition to my collection. If you are a fan of the “Hammerklavier,” then this recording should be welcome to yours as well.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

Jean-Claude Henriot (b. 1949) was born into a family of musicians. As a child, Henriot fixated his conception of great music upon Beethoven. His first great musical experience was of listening to a recording of the ‘Emperor’ Concerto. For this album Henriot has opted to venture outside of the frequently performed piano sonatas by programming Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Fantasia in G minor, Andante Favori, and 32 Variations in C minor. All of the works on this release were composed between 1803 and 1825, during the composer’s late period when the fullness of his potential had been reached.

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10/10 Classicstoday.com The music of Frank Zappa played on baroque instruments? 'As if! Like...grody to the max!' Ensemble Ambrosius is a group that concentrates on contemporary music, using mostly baroque instruments. Their first step in tackling the music of Frank Zappa was to use the 'Stevie Vai' method - every note was first transcribed from the original songs, and then arranged for the ensemble. Then the work began! Retaining the rhythmicality and metric pulse of the music was paramount. The results are like totally, what-ever! This is the ONLY Zappa album ever recorded on baroque instruments. It is a MUST for all Zappa fans.

Michael Byron’s music, which has appeared on four previous Cold Blue CDs, tends to be harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed, and virtuosic. It is often praised for its ability to create uniquely dense constructions out of relatively limited means: “Byron creates maximalist effect out of minimalist means.” (ClassicalNet) “One is reminded…of the mobiles of Alexander Calder, which are both fixed and moving. And, like Calder’s work, Byron’s music is immediately comprehensible and beautiful, while it remains experimental.” (San Francisco Bay Guardian) “Byron’s music, like Ligeti’s, is instantly recognizable, perceptually challenging, beautifully proportioned and deeply satisfying.” (Paris Transatlantic) In the Village of Hope is a restless (and in some ways relentless) virtuosic harp solo performed stunningly by Tasha Smith Godínez. This ever-changing, ever-churning, ever-developing music is unlike anything else in the solo harp repertoire. A 23-minute CD EP/single. Musicologist/critic/author Eric Smigel wrote of this CD, “In the Village of Hope simultaneously lulls and rouses the listener with elegantly cascading counterpoint and lush harmonies animated by complex rhythms. Its kaleidoscopic variations evoke ethereal wind chimes, rendering both the calm and the storm in a single gesture.” Sequenza 21 called it “gorgeous music…a single 23-minute track that unfolds with such delicacy and grace that an hour of it would not seem too much.” Fanfare magazine wrote, “Originally categorized as a minimalist, [Byron] has composed music over most of his career that more accurately might be described as maximalist, because it is in a state of constant and often rapid flux…. In the Village of Hope sounds like the kind of music a harp might play on itself, for itself, and by itself…. One associates the harp with angelic matters, and while In the Village of Hope doesn't confound that association, this is a heaven that is far from being regular and predictable, and where one is ruled not by immutable Bible truths but by the constant fluctuations of the natural world. This is very pretty listening, and, as such, recommendable.” And Julien Cowley wrote in The Wire, “Harp notes trickling and tumbling like eddies in a stream…. Byron has compared In The Village of Hope to the play of wind chimes, an image that not only suggests the range of timbres elicited by harpist Tasha Smith Godinez, but also fits the character of a piece that seems to occupy its own space while some animating spirit runs through it.”

PIANO PHANTOMS • Michael Lewin (pn) • SONO LUMINUS 92168 (65:56)


NIEMANN Ghosts: Night on the Fleet. LYAPUNOV Round of Phantoms. GRIEG The Goblins’ Wedding Procession at Vossevangen. LAUSIG The Ghost Ship. MEDTNER Wood Goblin. DVO?ÁK Goblins’ Dance. GOOSSENS A Ghost Story. TROYER Ghost Dance of the Zunis. KASKI Night Music of the Mountain Goblin. VALLIER The Ghosts at Restormel. BOLCOM Graceful Ghost Rag. FARJEON Some Goblins and Gnomes and Things. PRICE The Goblin and the Mosquito. BAINTON Goblin Dance. HILLER The Dance of the Phantoms. RIVÉ-KING March of the Goblins. SCHUBERT Spirit Dance (arr. Heller). SCHUMANN Ghost Variations


Theme recordings don’t always work, simply because the gimmick of the theme doesn’t always produce music of outstanding quality, but in this disc pianist Lewin seems to have been inspired by the learning of new pieces and thoroughly enjoyed making the disc. I, for one, also enjoyed listening to it.


A large part of the reason for my enjoyment was the fact that despite this “ghosts and goblins” theme, most of the music is really of a high quality. Little if any of it seems to have been written for effect, but merely to explore unusual melodic or harmonic structure by channeling ghostly titles. A quick glance at the list of composers immediately shows several whose reputations as good composers are undisputable—Niemann, Grieg, Medtner, Dvo?ák, Schubert, and Schumann—yet even the music of such composers as Sergei Lyapunov, Carl Tausig, Eugene Goossens, and Ferdinand Hiller are played here with consummate skill and high artistic commitment. Lewin, who won top honors in the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition and the William Kapell International Competition, is evidently an artist committed to excellence in phrasing and interpretation. Not for him the easy route of empty virtuosity: Lewin brings a fine sense of direction and continuity to everything he plays, and the result is a fascinating recital devoid of music one has heard time and time again.


Indeed, eight of the pieces on this disc (those by Troyer, Kaski, Farjeon, Price, Bainton, Hiller, Rivé-King, and Schubert) are world premiere recordings, and I was particularly delighted to see a piece on this disc by Florence Price, whose Piano Concerto I prize so highly. By giving just as much attention and energy to the music of lesser-known composers, Lewin elevates their music so that it sounds indistinguishable from that of the acknowledged masters. In fact, the “lightest”-sounding work on this program was actually Dvo?ák’s Goblin’s Dance, a nice piece but by no means a great one, and even here Lewin does his level best to raise its quality. (Oddly enough, Goossens’s A Ghost Story was a better piece than Dvo?ák’s!)


Harry Farjeon’s Some Goblins and Gnomes and Things turned out to be an excellent piece, as was Price’s The Goblin and the Mosquito. Hiller’s Dance of the Phantoms is merely an enjoyable little romp, but how Lewin plays it! A real surprise, to me, was the piece by Julie Rivé-King, a native Cincinnatian who studied with Liszt and performed with Carl Reinecke. It is another charming piece, but not as insubstantial as one might imagine in advance of hearing it.


Lewin wraps up his program with Schumann’s Ghost Variations, a work completely unknown to me, written in 1854 when the then-schizophrenic composer had a dream that ghosts and angels dictated this theme to him. His wife Clara was apparently upset by the music’s “other-worldly origins” and refused to allow it to be published; thus it did not appear until 1939. As Lewin points out in the notes, the music is “fragile, gentle and intimate, painfully private,” but really and truly, not “ghostlike” at all. Thus we come to the end of this fascinating and original compilation of offbeat piano pieces. Bravo, Michael Lewin!


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was most famous during his lifetime as a keyboard virtuoso, principally as an organist but also as a harpsichord player, and he composed a significant body of keyboard music. Many of these works (including transcriptions of his organ music) occupy a central place in the repertoire of pianists both amateur and professional, delighting players and listeners alike to this day. The keyboard music that Bach published falls into four anthologies, each titled Clavier �bung (Keyboard Practice), a rather dry title for what turns out to be an amazing wealth of music! Other works, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier Books I and II, while not published by Bach, circulated widely in manuscript form and have been influential on composers and performers: Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Reger, Schumann, Busoni and many others have fallen under Bach's spell, using his music to develop their own and their students' techniques, and inspired by Bach's extraordinary achievement when composing their own works. Books I and II of The Well-Tempered Clavier each contain preludes and fugues in all the 24 major and minor keys, from C major to B minor, and are collectively known as 'the 48'. Sometimes referred to as the 'Old Testament' of keyboard music (Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas being the 'New'), the preludes explore an astonishing variety of musical forms (including the famous toccata-like Prelude No 1 in C Major from Book I, various dance styles and concerto- or fantasia-like movements) while the fugues range equally broadly from rather formal examples in 'old fashioned' academic style to others based on more up-to-date musical forms. The term 'well-tempered' refers to the system of tuning, new in Bach's day, which allowed music to be played in any key and has become the standard in Western music. Bach's 15 two-part Inventions and 15 three-part Sinfonias BWV 772-801 were originally written as educational pieces for the notebook Bach prepared for his second wife, Anna Magdalena, herself an accomplished musician. During the Baroque period collections of 'overtures' or 'dance suites' were particularly popular. Bach composed three sets of six suites: the so-called 'English' Suites BWV 806-811, the 'French' Suites BWV 812-817 and the keyboard Partitas BWV 825-830. Each suite comprises a basic set of dances based on different national models, Allemande (German), Courante (Italian or French), Sarabande (Spanish/Latin American) and Gigue (French, based on the British Jig) with additional dances included. The Goldberg Variations BWV 988 presents an aria (that is, a song-like movement) with thirty variations based on the aria's bass line rather than it's tune (Beethoven would work similar wonders with his 'Diabelli' Variations Op. 120). The Italian Concerto BWV 971 was inspired by the exciting new music that was finding it's way north during Bach's lifetime. Bach also transcribed for keyboard several orchestral concertos by Vivaldi and other Italian composers. In addition, several shorter pieces, including the famous hymn Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and dances from the Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Notebook are included.

Taking a cue from a plethora of existing poetry and musical works, pianist Michael Lewin has included many bird selections in his recent concert programs, and their overwhelming public acceptance inspired the creation of this soaring musical collection. Compiling them into this album, If I Were a Bird contains enjoyable and rare works, some of which have not been previously recorded. The album is concluded by Stravinsky's Firebird Suite in the rarely heard and fiendishly difficult solo piano transcription by Guido Agosti.

Harold Truscott (1914–92) enjoyed a reputation as one of Britain’s most perceptive writers on music, a doughty champion of many neglected composers who have now become familiar figures. Truscott himself was a composer of some stature, writing in an individual style rooted in Beethoven and Schubert but also absorbing influences of Nielsen, Medtner and Hindemith. This is the first CD in a series presenting his substantial corpus of piano music. Ian Hobson, pianist and conductor, began his international career in 1981 when he won First Prize at the Leeds Int’l Piano Competition.

Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-99) composed for the guitar for over 75 years. Over his long and productive life he produced some of the best loved music ever written for the instrument – Concierto de Aranjuez and the Fantasia para un gentilhombre. His output for solo guitar and guitar duet form the bulk of his compositions and this 3-CD set encompasses all these works from the earliest in 1926 up to the late Ecos de Sefarad of 1987.

Strangely for one who devoted so much of his creative energies to the guitar, Rodrigo was not a guitarist, but a pianist of considerable technique. His flair for exuberance, display of technique and the combination of popular styles and great refinement ensure that all the works on these CDs are full of delightful surprises, and typical of this composers unpretentious style.

Recorded in 2007 and produced by Michael Haas.

Track list:

Disk 1
1 Por los campos de España
2 Por los campos de España
3 Por los campos de España
4 Sonata a la Española
5 Sonata a la Española
6 Sonata a la Española
7 Sonata a la Española
8 Tres pequeñas piezas
9 Tres pequeñas piezas
10 Tres pequeñas piezas
11 Tonadillafor two guitars
12 Tonadillafor two guitars
13 Tonadillafor two guitars

Disk 2
1 Sonata giocosa
2 Sonata giocosa
3 Sonata giocosa
4 Sonata giocosa
5 Sonata giocosa
6 Tres piezas españolas
7 Tres piezas españolas
8 Tres piezas españolas
9 Elogio de la guitarra
10 Elogio de la guitarra
11 Elogio de la guitarra

Disk 3
1 Dos preludios
2 Dos preludios
3 Ecos de Sefarad
4 Pájaros de primavera
5 ¡Qué buen caminito!
6 Un tiempo fue Itálica famosa 7’48
7 Tríptico
8 Tríptico
9 Tríptico
10 En tierras de Jerez
11 Tocccata
12 Zarabanda lejana