SOMM Recordings announces Cascade; the exhilarating new recital by pianist Cordelia Williams featuring music by Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev. Cascade explores music’s mercurial ability to change in an instant; to reveal depths beneath the surface; and to illustrate; as Williams says; “that the whole world can change entirely in one twist of perspective; one change of angle; to offer a glimpse of something bigger”.

Early and late Beethoven bookend the program. Unpublished in his lifetime; the C major Bagatelle (WoO 56) flickers and glints; sparkles and surprises with kaleidoscope-like brilliance. His Op.126 Six Bagatelles – among the very last pieces he wrote for solo piano – alternate between the introspective and the garrulous; each turned inside out to reveal new facets and features. A variegated collection of 20 miniatures with hints of Chopin; Scriabin and Shostakovich to be found; Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives; Op.22 are essentially a series of meditations; each individually pursuing a specific idea or mood while collectively exploring the hinterland between surface appearance and what lies beneath; and all expressed with comparable crystalline clarity. Schumann’s Waldszenen (Forest Scenes); his last major cycle for solo piano; is an enchanted landscape lit up by beguiling pastoralism and shadow-cast by darker recesses of the imagination. Two sides of the same coin: Arcadia in excelsis; and red in tooth and claw.

Booklets notes; as with all of Cordelia Williams’ recent SOMM releases; have been written by Michael Quinn. Piano winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition; Cordelia Williams’ previous SOMM releases include her acclaimed coupling of Bach and Arvo Pärt (SOMMCD 0186); hailed by International Piano as “a magnificently stimulating concept; brilliantly recognised”; well-received recitals of Schubert (SOMMCD 0127) and Schumann (SOMMCD 0150); and Nightlight (SOMMCD 0639); which Fanfare hailed for Williams’ “spectacular playing” and which Gramophone described as “extraordinary”.

SOMM Recordings announces the return of pianist Cordelia Williams with Nightlight, a compelling exploration of the contrariness of night, its turmoil, terror and tenderness, and the longing for light. Inspired by Williams’ experience mothering her two infant children in the isolating dead of night while the world around her slept, Nightlight is dedicated, she says, “to the many people who... feel alone in the darkness. To those who experience despair or sublime melancholy during the hours before the dawn, who are searching for solace, peace or impossible hope. To anyone lost who is waiting to be found by the light”. Spanning four centuries, from Thomas Tomkins’ exquisitely melancholic A Sad Pavanfor these Distracted Times to jazz virtuoso Bill Evans’ hypnotic, fantasy-laced Peace Piece, the recital moves from sleep-inducing nightfall – Mozart’s D minor Fantasia, K.397 – to waking hopes for the new dawn in what Williams describes as the “shimmering hope, glory just beyond the horizon” of Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn).The becalmed and tempest-driven waters of the ocean in Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.2 (Sonata-Fantasy) prove a perfect metaphor for the stilled and turbulent currents of the night. Plunging into night’s darkest, most disturbed places, the dislocations of Schubert’s late Sonata in C minor, D958, are salved by two soothingly nocturne-like Liszt Consolations. “The music recorded here,” says Williams, “sees our loneliness and darkness, recognizes and validates those unutterable feelings, and reaches out a hand of consolation.” Piano winner of the 2006 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition, Cordelia Williams’ previous SOMM releases include her acclaimed coupling of Bach and Arvo Pärt (SOMMCD 0186) hailed by International Piano as “a magnificently stimulating concept, brilliantly recognized” and well-received recitals of Schubert (SOMMCD 0127) and Schumann (SOMMCD 0150).